I'm an idiot...

Duh...

First off, no new pics, yet, but I've just had a rush of good ideas while searching around Ikea's website and then wandering off on a Charley Harper tangent.

Anyway, my roommates returned from San Fran last weekend with some cute living room pillow covers (Lusy Knoff, or some such nonsense...). They're white with buttons drawn all over them with black line grids drawn in around them. Anyway, I've got this sort-of coffee table sitting in the garage that needs some love and I've been wondering what to do with it, etc., thinking about doing some striped legs with a decoupage top, but now I'm thinking that doing it to match the pillows would be a GREAT idea, even if it doesn't really "go" in our living room (we already have a coffee table, which is old and nice-ish, but slightly ruined by magazine ink getting transferred onto its surface...). I also have these two small (8X10, perhaps...) canvasses that I've been wondering what to do with, and those to match the two pillows would be PERFECT! Although doing them in the same white background would get lost on our walls, which are the beige-ish hue of masking tape. They could go somewhere else, since our walls need something really BIG and standout-ish to "pop" in the room (we have giant, colorful original art EVERYWHERE, so things tend to get lost, a bit...). Perhaps above our blue brick fireplace, or maybe somewhere entirely different...

But the table is very do-able. And it would look REALLY cool in our living room.

As for the Penelope tree, following my Charley Harper Googling brought me to a similar (but smaller - a single branch) type of thing, and after Googling "decorative tree branches", I felt like an idiot because, DUH! Every craft store has these smaller real and fake branches for decorations. I'll bet that Walmart's miniscule craft section even has something that I want, because I know that they have two whole aisles dedicated to fake flowers...

So that is looking back on track for a real birthday gift opportunity.

As far as my polymer clay experience has gone, I bought a more difficult kind/brand to work with, and so I'm not sure if this particular brick is old and dried out or if they're all like that, but it is HARD to work with. It cracks every time I try to smooth it out and won't blend together easily at all, even after I've worked it quite a bit. I wasn't happy with any of the things that I tried as an experiment... I should have bought the Fimo Soft brand stuff, which will hopefully be easier to shape and smooth. Problematically, I don't want to spend a lot of what little cash I do have on something just to have it turn out not how I would like it to, so I will probably be putting that "Chihuly" project off for a month, or so.

Also, bought some fun beads for dangly earrings for the same birthday gift happenning at the beginning of next month (Nov.), and I just need to hook up with a friend to get some help/supplies for making them. I have stuff to make non-dangly earrings, but looking at all the supplies for dangly stuff was daunting. I had no idea what I should get or would need, so I'll just get a couple of pieces from the friend, if she ever gets back to me...

I feel like working on something (painting...), right now, so I may post again this evening.