Clay ornaments

I have one week of class left then a brief period of delightful nothingness before it starts up again. I keep saying I'm not going to take summer classes again, but yet I always seem to end up there again, bitching and moaning the whole time about how I'm not going to do it again.

This time I mean it. I don't care if it takes an extra year to finish my Bachelors, next summer, I'm taking it OFF! I'm thinking of taking the kids to Florida again anyways.

Once I'm done with this school nonsense this week I've got several piles of craftyness I've been wanting to dig into. I've got dance costumes that need assembled, I want to dabble in my water colors and work on my drawing skills, but mostly my fingers are itching to get into my polymer clay again.

For the last 2 years I've made 'cutesy' ornaments and sold them at Christmas time for extra Christmas money. Mostly cats hanging off of glass balls, but last year I came up with an extra cool version that I thought was way cute:

The kittys vain attempt to capture the fish made his expression seem more comical than cute. 'Cute' usually isn't my style, but if its something that makes you laugh I'm all for it. I visualize the fish thinking 'Dude, your sooo totally not going to get me...'

The tricky part with this original design was orienting the cat so he didn't completely make the ball hang crooked so the fish inside rests against the glass (which ruined the floaty swimmy fishie effect). My first solution was to put another cat on the other side to balance the ball, which is also cute because then it looks like a conspiracy to catch the fish, but its also makes the whole presentation a little more fragile. Another tricky part was constructing the fish in a way that I could get him inside the glass after cooking him without breaking him. I totally pulverized a few unfortunate uncooked fellows before getting it right.

This version of my cats was quite popular, and before I knew it all the clear glass balls I had bought were gone and Christmas ornies aren't something that are usually available year round. I had people asking about them well after December but had no supplies to make any. But recently I found a huge stash of them at Hobby Lobby, in larger quantites and *on sale*. Yay, now I can premake plenty before Christmas time and not worry so much about running out. And I also have plenty of extra to play with some other ideas I had as I'd like to try out some non-Christmasy stuff. Though I know alot of people leave theirs out all year long, especially the ones that I did memorial cats for. I'll have people send me pictures of their cats and I'll make the cat to look like theirs which is tricky sometimes, but a fun challenge. I especially like when I can make an angel cat for someone such as this guy:

This is actually a version of my parents cat Tina who died right before Christmas. I like doing angel cats, a more sentimental version of clay cuteness.

I'm trying to expand my range from cats, so far I've also done foxes and racoons because they're almost the same shape as cats. Dogs are trickier because they have very breed specific ears, muzzles, tails, yadda yadda. But experimentation is in order, and I do have some fun ideas I'm going to work with. If I come up with anything noteworthy I'll be sure to share some pictures.