Faux Cactus Garden: A Frivolous, Pointless...and Fun! Project

 About a month ago I saw this idea on Pinterest. I thought it was totally cute, despite the fact that I an not a fan of knicknacks and anything that requires dusting. A few days later, my friend Caitlin shared the link on her blog...and there it was again! I decided to make it, if just for the fun of playing with clay. I decided not to fiddle with them for long, because that's sort of the charm of them...right?

They are made from Sculpey, painted with acrylic and sealed with gloss medium. They are fun, funky and ridiculous, and they have found their home on the bookshelf for the time being!

Closet Flashback: Playing With Clay

I've been in a serious creative funk. It's the kind that comes from having a string of botched projects like when you put the finishing touches on a new dress and then the zipper breaks before you can even wear it. Then the seam ripper makes a big hole while trying to take it out to put in a new one...then the needle snaps....then the thread gets snarled and breaks.... 

But I digress.

To reboot my brain I decided to look around my house for inspiration in successful projects that I've made over the years and loved working on. That's when I found this little vase that I made back in high school (no...I'm not doing the math on when that was). Pottery was my favorite class and I REALLY enjoyed working on this project. It's a little lopsided but I loved (and still do!) the drippy glaze and how the colors all came together. 

At it's widest part it's probably only about 4" in diameter.

Much like a dress, I like to put effort into the inside and OUT

I used a light application of white glaze for the base then thickly applied streaks of alternating color that faded into blue. 

After staring at the vase for quite a while I decided that I had enough creative energy to attack the broken zipper again. Hopefully, by the end of the day I'll have a mended dress and the willpower to actually start a new project!