Linda's Magic Workshop - Linda Britt Design

Choices of items to buy made by the teachers at Clay Out West This month workshops and classes head the list of things I've done or going to do.  Clay Out West used to be called 'Carnival' and was in Las Vegas.  For years I've wanted to attend but did not.  The location changed to Albuquerque NM and I decided I was going!  The polymer clay workshop ran for 4 days with internationally known teachers.  Peter and I drove from Prescott to Albuquerque in a day - a long day!  He spent his days exploring the area - the zoo, the Rattlesnake Museum, the Petroglyph Park and Sandia Peak.  Lots for him to do.  I spent my days in a classroom playing and learning with lots of other crazy artists.   There were 4 classrooms with 20 ladies (and a couple of men) in each.  The teachers rotated between rooms. Result from Carol Blackburn's class Animals from Leslie Blackford's class My goal now that I am home is to spend a day (several days it turns out) practicing

Leaves turning colors - Velvet covering on the young buck's antlers - Searching for that light weight jacket for walks - Enjoying cool night and early morning breezes - Visiting Flicker in the pine trees - he knows - It must be fall! And where did summer go? In keeping with that theme, this is my new seed pod I'm adding to my collection. The outer shell is made of copper metal clay and the pod is made of polymer clay.  It's fun to combine the two mediums.  Interested in the process?  Keep reading! If anyone has been following my FaceBook posts, you know I've been learning about and testing the temperatures of my new Paragon E12A kiln.  The interior temperature is not the same as the digital readout so I've been making my own chart.  While doing this testing I decided to make something from my clay instead of just strips and circles (I'm doing that too).  What better that a seedpod? The copper clay is Hadar's Friendly copper clay and it is

It's not too soon to think about holiday ornaments - especially if you are making them!  The holiday season gets hectic for all of us and if you are like me I may get too busy to enjoy what I'm doing.  I find it relaxing to start making the ornaments in time to really enjoy the process.  Each year I decide what kind of ornament I want to make.  This year I decided to make these polymer stacked ornaments and teach a class at The Prescott Art Market.  The snowflake cookie cookers I've been collecting are the perfect outline shapes since they graduate in size.  For my prototypes I'm using some scrap polymer clay and chose these colors - a light, a medium and a dark - to overlap. Deciding which layers get holes and what colors to stack gives me the opportunity to embellish. Textures, rhinestones, lines, and embossing powder and the holes for hanging are added.   The ornaments are cured (baked at 275 degrees F)  and they are ready for hangers or ribbons.