The secret project... work in progress

1. Honesty Seed Pods2. Not available

1. Untitled2. Not available

This gives you a bit of a clue where we were inspired by...

The honesty seedpods are a bit of an experiment. The one on the right is made with two very thin slabs of clay where I put little seeds in between. The one on the left are two very thin fabric leaves which I soaked in liquid porcelain clay. I also put some seeds in between these.

The starfruit like shape needed to have a hole through them all the way. Not easy because you can't do it when the clay is sculpted 'cause it will deform when trying to add a hole. So I strung a piece of clay on cotton thread and sculpted the pod. The thread fired away and there is a nice hole through the whole pod.

To know the idea behind the secret project, go read the first blogpost here or click on the label 'the secret project' to see all the posts about it.
Can't wait to receive your guesses but think about it carefully 'cause you can only guess once! :)
You can send your guess to mitsy@artmind.eu and can not change your guess so think about it carefully...

Flickr Favorites

1.OneBlackBird, 2. Not available, 3. thrifted tapestry wool!, 4. blanket and chair

I found some thrifted goodies the other day: a workbench & a chair. I'm especially over the moon with the workbench I found. It's handmade & huge: I love it.
The chair was only 0,15 eurocents (0,21$) at the secondhand store that's around our corner. I'll paint it and it will look as new!
I looked through Flickr to see what other thrifted goodies people find sometimes and I hope to bump into the some of that yarn too one day - it looks scrumptious & I can't believe someone has the heart to throw that away. I also need a new cupboard so I'll be browsing secondhand sites & visit some other secondhand shops. But I need it quick so I might end up going to Ikea if I don't find what I need ...
The table in this picture is from Oneblackbird on Etsy. I love her work & her studio is amazing!

Don't forget to look at my favorite from last week... (I warn you, it's a bit creepy though)

If you like to play this week, make your mosaic and add a link to your blogpost (NOT your blog please) or Flickr in Mister Linky (click on the button below and fill in your name with the link to your blogpost or Flickr picture).
I'll pop over to have a look at yours. Can't wait to see your creations and find new favorites! :)

Monday Moodboard

1. byMarianneS, 2. Marievan, 3. Littlehuismus, 4. TheBroochBoutique

The monday moodboard is a feature by the European Streetteam. It wants to show blogreaders which talented artists are part of our team.
So happy to show you these talents peeps! Aren't these soft colors super?

How's your mood today? For more moodboards, please visit Fleur Fatale's blog.

How to make & use plaster plaques?

You must think I'm a plaster addict... well I am one apparently even though I don't like the mess of it but plaster is just so useful to many clay artists. I use a lot of plaster plaques while working with clay. They extract the water from the clay so that means that the object which is put on there will stay nice and flat. When my clay is too soft, I put it on a plaster plaque and a few minutes later, it's ready to use.
They are super handy to use so I'm going to show how I make these.

Here is what you need: baking trays or big plastic trays,

liquid beeswax, brush, plaster, container, waterPut some beeswax in your tray.
This makes sure that the plaster will come loose from the tray.

Makes sure that you put beeswax all around the tray.
Oops, I used a bit too much here but I'll poor it over
into another tray as I'm going to make lots of plaster plaques!

Mix your plaster: 1 cup of water & 3 cups of plaster - depends a bit on your plaster.

I usually use the pyramid method: put the plaster in one pile and when the water doesn't suck up the plaster anymore it's ready to stir.

Poor the plaster into the tray.

Shake the tray a little bit so that the airbubbles come out.

When the plaster is nearly dry, I quickly pressed some leaves into them.
Since I actually use the smooth side, I thought I could use the bottom too to create some textures... You can see what I did with the textures here.

After half an hour/an hour it's ready to come out of the tray.

It's still to wet to use but after drying it for a few days, it's ready to use.
It's freaking smooth - love it!

Here you can see the textured side.

And this is what I do with them: I put little cut out pieces of clay on them to let them dry. If I would let them dry by themselves, they would go all crooked. But since the plaster sucks the clay onto the surface they stay nice and flat. I also use newspaper to put on top as that also sucks the water out of the clay.

Hope you enjoyed another of my plaster/clay adventures! :)

Dream in progress... part 14

The past week has been busy with lots of things so I didn't get much done on sewing together my my Babette blanket. However, even though I haven't done much sewing, I'm showing you anyway. I'm afraid it will also be a very slow process as sewing is really not my thing... I'm sure it is going to take me forever to finish this blanket... but I will persevere!
Well at least I'm already able to cover a little bit of me! :) Hopefully a little more each week!

Secret Santa

Picture by Simple Tess

Oops, this was a scheduled post an has been empty for a while so today is the first time that I actually blog in the past! LOL I planned to start with the first post about the Secret Santa on the European Streetteam yesterday. But the matching took me some time and I didn't manage to get it all done. No wonder as there are 101 participants... impressive right?
Secret Santa is a game played by the European Streetteam on Etsy. The idea behind the Secret Santa is that you make something for a teammember and also receive a gift yourself. Since I try to organise the game for our team, I get a lovely reward: reading all the questionnaires and knowing all the teammember's secrets! :)
What I also know it that lots of people of the team would like to read them all too... That's why I share part of the answers on the questions in my blog. And even though it's anonymous, it's still fun to read what other people wrote... So this is just a warning that from now on, every friday, you'll find a post about Secret Santa in my blog. Oh joy! :)

My creative space

I'll spent lots of time behind my laptop in my creative space today. I'll be matching all the participants of the European Streetteam on Etsy for the Secret Santa.
This involves reading about 99 questionnaires and trying to find the perfect match for all of them. There's lots of fun questions involved & I can't wait to find out all the secrets of our teammembers. I'll also be sharing the answers on my blog soon so if you're a curious soul, you'll have to come back to find out...

Want to show your creative space? Hop over to Kootoyoo's to play! It's fun! :)