The Bead Spot

My daughter, my niece and I put the pottery wheel my daughter bought back in November to use recently. It was fun, but not as easy as I thought it would be. Going into our afternoon of pottery making, I foolishly thought my daughter and niece would each be able to create their own cup. But I realized after the first 10 minutes of trying to shape the first project that we would have time for only one. Also, the instructions were not as clear as I think they could've been. It would've been nice if they had a diagram noting what each piece was called, and I just wasn't understanding based on the instructions when it would be OK to remove the cup from the encasement. So, our first effort was mostly a trial-and-error project. We didn't bother to smooth out rough edges because I just wanted to test how long it would take the clay to dry and whether it would be OK to wait until it was entirely dry before removing it from the encasement. In short, it's not pretty, bu...

A heart my daughter made for Father's Day. Yesterday, with less than five hours left until Father's Day, my 4-year-old whispered in my ear that she wanted to make a heart out of clay for her daddy and cover it with glitter. We had none of the supplies at home, but, because the idea was hers entirely, I wanted her to be able to make it. We headed off to Hobby Lobby for clay and glitter, making our way to the checkout just as the store closed. When we got home, I settled in to balance my checkbook, while she molded the heart. Every so often, she'd call out, "Mommy, come look!" to show me how it progressed. I'll be honest, it looked a little rough, but she's just 4, and she was proud and so was I. She made the bulk of the heart out of pink clay, adding three purple clay hearts on top. She used up the bulk of the pink clay for the project, I had a feeling that using that much clay would prevent the heart from drying in time, but she was so proud of...

These are the wooden beads I bought a few weeks ago at Dollar Tree.  When I got them, I had planned to make some more stretchy kids bracelets, but I've been having second thoughts lately. Because they're made of wood, I think they might look more cohesive with a natural cord versus the elastic string I had planned to use. Perhaps I'll try them both ways to see which works best.

I think that before I move on to anything else, after I finish the bracelet I'm currently working on, I'm going take apart the children's bracelets I made that are too small for 5 year olds. I like the colors of them, so I plan to just remake them in the same colors. I wish I could just add beads to them, but there's no way to do that without throwing off the spacing, unless I break the strings between each "flower," but that would weaken them too much.