YEAH!!!!! She's Back!!!!

Oh my gosh...I am so happy...my muse is back! After days and days of being uninspired I finally am sculpting again!

And you wanna know where my muse was hiding...On http://www.pogo.com/. If you aren't familiar with pogo, it's and online game site. They have a free membership and then a paid Club membership. I am thoroughly addicted to pogo. (thanks to a birthday present of a membership from my sister. THANKS MUG! lol) So anyways, there I was feeling kinda bummed and crummy, playing a game called Squelchies. (it's a match 3 type game, set under the sea) And on the background are all these corals and sea anemones. And it just hit me....I wanna make an anemone!

So I got in and mixed up some glow in the dark clay, with a little white, and some translucent. And started rolling...oh yeah and I looked up anemones online to see what they looked like.:-) So I rolled and rolled and rolled until I had a couple dozen of the little buggers. Then I dipped the tip of each one into Pearlex powders in Interference Green and Violet. (for any non crafters these are powdered pigments similar to loose eyeshadow) I then baked the lot of them and chilled in ice water to get them as translucent as possible. While those where baking I took a little of my tentacle mix and added some pink powder. And made some pointy, swoopy tentacles for a different anemone. I also mixed some pink clay with some pale brown and sculpted the pink anemone's base. After my glow tentacles came out I baked the pink parts.

While those where baking and chilling I realized that my anemone needed a clownfish. I mean really, what self respecting anemone would be caught without it's resident little orange buddy? So off surfing I went again looking for pictures of clownfish. Thankfully I found a really great picture, and I set about sculpting possibly the smallest and most realistic piece of my sculpting career...so far! :-) I really amazed myself...he turned out...dare I say it...almost perfect!!!

After my tentacles and anemone base came out and were chilling, I baked my 'nemo'. I inserted a thin wire while sculpting him too. And then I got to work assembling the 2 different anemones. The pink one was pretty simple. I added some liquid clay to the base then added a 'blob' of more pink/glow clay. I poked holes around the perimeter and added more TLS to each hole, and stuck in a wavy tentacle. When I finished going around I brushed more TLS over the base of each 'arm' and then into the oven he went.

Nemo's anemone took a little more work as the type that clownfish usually live is have tentacles covering their surface rather than just the outside edge. So I shaped the base, took a paintbrush end, and poked dozens and dozens of holes across the top and along the edges. Smearing another good coat of TLS over and into the holes I started applying the tentacles. Of course wouldn't you know I needed more tentacles! lol Good thing I tend to mix up more color than I might need. ;-) So I counted to see how many I'd need and rolled, dipped, baked and chilled again. I added Nemo and then finished adding his pal's tentacles. I used some white TLS and painted on Nemo's stripes. I will use black paint to add the final details tomorrow.

I hope you enjoy the collage of my anemones, and thanks for 'listening' while I released my joy at my muse finally returning! :-)

Deborah