WOYWW #466: Playing with paper clay

WOYWW is hurtling towards its 9th anniversary! I find it incredible that our lovely hostess, Julia, has managed to keep this crafty blog hop thriving for so many years - and hopefully for lots more to come! Here's my desk shot this week:

I've been playing with paper clay, aka air drying clay. I bought a few silicone moulds from China and I still have a block of clay from last year when I worked on this plaque.  I managed to keep it fresh by double wrapping the open packet in plastic bags with a wet paper towel inside to keep it moist. This seems to have worked really well and my clay is as fresh as it was when I first opened it.

On the left side of my desk, you can see the start of my ATCs for the anniversary swap - or rather you can't see them, as I've blurred them out to keep them secret until the big day. The only thing I can say about them is that they're going to be a different colour entirely - that's just the colour of the card stock I cut them from. It's very much unlike me to be so organised ahead of time, so I'm quite pleased with myself.

This is how my paper clay pieces turned out this morning: (I know the faces are a bit freaky - I've had that mould for a while, so I thought I might as well use it  - the other two are new acquisitions.)

That's all the craftiness for this week, I'm afraid. Ooh, I almost forgot to tell you that my stint at The Range has come to an end. I really enjoyed working in the craft section but when they moved me to another section a couple of weeks ago involving heavy lifting and stressful working conditions, I knew I wasn't going to last but I still gave it a good shot. Does it make sense to you to move the only person who actually knows the arts and craft products to another section? I'm so proud that I was able to give advice to numerous customers about what glues, paints or mediums to use, but apparently that knowledge is not appreciated by the management. Anyway, I could write an essay about this, but I won't bore you with details. It will be nice to have some free time until I get another job - who knows, one day I might even find my place? I'll keep looking.

I've been quite busy with my camera this week, so I can show you some arty photos in lieu of any arty projects. The old apple tree behind our house was in full bloom for a few days - I managed to capture it and play around with the photos digitally:

We've done quite a lot of gardening planting a new hedge boundary. I kept both the plants and hubby - who did the lion's share of the work - well watered (or in his case "tead")!

In case you didn't find the clay faces freaky enough, how about this close-up of a moth?

And, of course, there's no WOYWW post without Oreo! Here he is "al fresco" sitting on the fence - he can spend hours sitting there watching the birds.

Thank you for visiting!

I'm off to work for my last day shortly, but I'll visit everyone when I'm back.

xx