Well, my boyfriend lovingly informed me that he's tired of seeing "Merry Christmas" on this page. I guess I'll obligingly begone with that. Beware though, as I have a bit to catch up on. Hopefully someone besides him will find it an interesting read.

First of all, I apologise for my long absense. I may still slack but we'll see. This time, I can actually say I haven't gone this long without updating for lack of anything actually being created, at least. I've made quite a few things, and have some more in the works. In fact, I'm branching out a bit as far as my artistic/crafty repertoire goes.

I've discovered a few wonderful things.

First and foremost is a lovely thing called Friendly Plastic. Before I go into detail on what it is, since I'm sure many haven't heard of it before, I'll explain how I came across it. Of all places, I was in Fry's Electronics buying a new power supply cord. But as I began wandering around looking for where my sister went, I discovered her at the magazine stand, intrigued that she'd be interested in those kinds of things.

As it turns out, Fry's has a huge selection of magazines and happened to have some pretty spiff jewelry mags. Moreover, one had a truly awesome purple necklace on the cover. The cabochon was dichroic glass -- or so we thought.

It was created with Friendly Plastic strips. They come in 7 inch strips, $2 each, in a wide variety of colors and designs. They're a base plastic with a metallic sheen/layer on the top. Long story short you can do a lot of awesome stuff with it, and all you have to do is heat it up a little in some warm water, put it on a grittle, or warm it up with a heat gun (which is what I've been doing). Afterward you can seal it however you like but many artists, myself included, prefer using resin. More specifically, Envirotex Lite. In using it you make a heat-proof item which, with a couple layers of resin, looks just like dichroic glass. In some cases, better.

This medium is truly amazing and I've had a lot of fun with it so far. I need more supplies (when I can afford them) to make anything too fancy but in the meantime I'm content. I "accidentally" made a really awesome pendant with it just the other day. When I upload the finished product (prolly won't be for a week or two on that one), it will probably be called the Heart of the Sea. I'm also making a window hanging with a slight stained glass effect that looks different at day and night... very cool.

This stuff has been around for ages from my understanding, and it just never caught on with too many people. That's a shame. Maybe what I show off will get a few more people into it. You can find it at Hobby Lobby, not at Michaels. If anyone would like to see more, I urge you to google Jana Ewy, who specializes in it and makes gorgeous things.

Next!

It looks like I've been out of the craft loop. I met a lovely woman in Barnes and Noble the other weekend who was talking about her love for doing many different kinds of artsy things as versus specializing. I told her about my new fascination with Friendly Plastic and asked if she could recommend anything else fun and she told me about a product called Shrinky Dinks. Apparently that stuff is more popular. It's a plastic that shrinks to 1/3 its size and 9x its original thickness in your oven but you can draw and color on it before you shrink it and make keychains and plastic pendants and ornaments and the like. I'm sure I'll find many fun things to do with it.

My problem right now is that my Prismacolor pencils are spread all over the creation packed in storage because I thought I would never be using them again. They're probably bad now; Prismacolors need to be well taken care of or else when you draw with them they get an ugly cloudy sheen on top. As much as I hate to (and at the moment cannot), I'll probably just end up buying a whole new set for $50 or so.

Other than that...

I've started making a box with glass tiles and grout - you know, mosaic glass type stuff. Not quite sure how that's going to turn out but we'll see. I have the lid done but I'm considering painting the grout and thinking on what to do with the base. Ideally I would like to get some more Perfect Pearls powder (it's like Pearl-Ex but sticks to anything just by applying water, it's wonderful and beautiful) but they don't come in individual colors (grr) so there goes another $15 if I decide to get the color I need for it.

I have a masterwork clay dragon necklace that's needed finished for the longest time. Maybe you'll see it within the month. I'm aiming to have it done by next weekend but that doesn't seem likely. I haven't bought the beads for it and haven't seen any that excite me. Maybe this weekend. (Or not.)

More than art I've been working on my novel which I may or may not have mentioned before. Five years in the works (and working on it everyday) and hardly half done. Woe and dismay. Someday. At least it's fun to do.

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Please do let me know how you all are doing. Even though I go huge spans and don't update, I still love all my friends here and think about you quite a bit. Especially you, Tally, if you're still out there. <3

If anyone has anything awesome to show me, go for it! I have 5,000 deviations in my inbox and I don't believe I'll be sorting through them all. O____o My deepest apologies.