Marlene's 50th Surprise Birthday party

Marlene's sister Linda has organised a surprise party for Marlene's 50th birthday, as you can see from the photos below, she was completely stunned when she entered a small room where we were all waiting for her, I was glad she didn't have a heart attack, lol.

Bottom left: Marlene with her sisters Linda and Lynn and her Mum. Bottom right: all the guests

Linda is a professional wedding and events organiser and the party was superb. It was a high tea with beautifully decorated table, floating roses, yummy food and a gorgeous birthday cake.

As a present I made a small picture for Marlene. This is the packaging.

Marlene opening it.

Marlene showing off the picture while chatting with Gaye.


Here is the picture. It started with little houses and it grew to a wooden block with all other stuff on it. I was glad to use my vintage keys which I bought on a Polish ebay and the blue egg beads which I bought during my last trip to Melbourne.

A close up. I used 47 upholstery tacks for this picture, last night Ross told me to stop banging as I was going to wake up the neigbhours, not to mention that he couldn't sleep either. I had to quickly finish the nailing this morning, before leaving for the party.

AOTM for Diana

Today I managed to finish a small wall hanging made out of wood as Art of the Month for Diana. I hope she likes it.

PMC class part 2

These are all the pieces I made, polished and with patina, now I have to make them into necklaces. The two colourful pieces are with glass which Maggie makes herself. In the future I probably prefer to make pieces just from silver clay with no other additions but it was good to practice and learn all techniques.

The below piece is a ring which I made today. It is quite difficult to make a ring as the clay shrinks 12% after firing and you need to incorporate the shrinkage into the ring size so it still fits on your finger. Thanks to Maggie my size is perfect and the ring fits on the finger I made it for!

Guess what? PMC is so addictive that I already signed up for an intermediate class in September and advanced one in November. If only the clay was a bit cheaper...

Day one of the PMC class

Today I did the first day of the Precious Metal Clay (PMC) class with Maggie Bergman on the Gold Coast but she also does classes in Melbourne if you are interested. She is a fantastic teacher, highly recommended.

We fully created 3 pieces and started on 2 more which are being fired overnight in a kiln, it will be exciting to see how they turn up tomorrow morning.

These are two little charms I made first off, they turned up to the cute little things.

PMC works like magic which I managed to photograph today as I went through every step.

This is a formed piece, ready to be fired.

This piece has just been fired with a butane torch and already turned into silver which can't be seen as it needs to be polished. It works like magic - you should have heard us oohing in the class when it went from this to what you see on the next picture.

This is what you get after you treat the piece with a steel brush.


And with some further burnishing you get this. We are still to patina this tomorrow to highlight certain parts and to age it a bit.

New floor and feeling very sore

Finally I had a free weekend to finish the floor in the spare room which is somewhat a "controversial" room. My husband Ross thinks it is his room and he calls is "the media room" as there is a spare TV and a computer there. He recently put a huge world map on the wall and enjoys checking locations of various countries all the time. My sister calls it her room as this is where she stays when she visits us but also Celeste, who stays with us from time to time, has a claim on that room, lol. Anyway, the floor is done and I can hardly walk now , muscles in my legs and buttocks are just killing me, I never thought I had so many muscles!

Inspecting the floor

Ross's world map

AOTM from Debbi. Misty finally framed and on the wall

Lucky me, I got another Art of the Month creation from Debbi which is just gorgeous. It is made on small canvas and I attached it to a wooden plaque I bought at Reverse Garbage a while ago. I nailed it down with some upholstery tacks and it is already displayed on my wall.

Here you can see it on the wall, next to Misty Mawn creation which I bought two years ago at the Art Retreat in Melbourne and which I finally framed.

AOTM for Debbi

This month it was only Debbi and I who played the Art of the Month exchange so naturally we made things for each other. Here is what I made for Debbi, a button necklace and bracelet. I hope she likes them.