Heavy Metal

I was really excited to finally be taking a class with Mike Putman at Mystic Paper this past Sat. The minute I saw his examples, I signed up for his Metal Tape and Sculpey class. It was well worth the wait. Here's one of Mike's examples. "Wow!" was my first reaction.
Metal tape isn't new to me. I first tried it out in a class taught by Josie Ciricione a few years ago. We covered a composition book with the tape, embossed with metal letter stamps, stained with Staz-On inks and I was hooked. I learned a couple of new tricks in Mike's class and ended up with this beauty-The only thing I want to add is a red stained strip/tag at the bottom that reads "Love Grows." My experience with Sculpey was OK at best. It's me, NOT the teacher. I'm better working with clay although it's more time consuming and much heavier than Sculpey. I'd need to take my time and concentrate on one thing to get better results. I was more focused on taping my piece.
Leaving the store after class, I came across this lovely gem. I took plenty of pictures. It would be a great addition to my backyard. "The Girls " might appreciate it although they're female so they squat rather than leg lift...
The Chicklet spent some time creating. We picked up this little chest a few weeks ago and she finally got me to get my paints out. She seems to "feed her shirt" every time she eats ice cream so we put my Micheal Demeng apron on her. Looks like we should make her a fun apron for painting days.

She wanted to put some self adhesive gems on the chest last night but we had to wait for the paint to dry. We got up earlier than usual this morning and I noticed some of the gems had been added on. She almost forgot to eat breakfast but didn't pass up the chance to work on her project. Sounds familiar...

Has it been 9 weeks already? I was whining about grades right around the time I started this blog. It's that time again-grade time. Yeah, GGGGGGrrrrrrrrrrrade time! Not very inspiring but I do end up cleaning and organizing in order to avoid the inevitable. And the grades do get done.

Marissa