Polymer Clay & Bipolar Babes

First off here's my weekend efforts with polymer clay. They are very amateurish but it was the first time I'd EVER worked with clay and I'm confident I will improve, it always takes a little time to get the feel of a new medium. I'm currently midway through making a lily focal which is noticably better than the first pieces

Selection of pendants, drops and connecters. My poor fairy has a scratch which I'll fix before covering her in resin for a nice glass-like finish:



Beads made with the clay 'leftovers'. Mainly I just wanted to see if I could manage regular, consistent spheres



In personal news, I was at the docs earlier partly to get more drugs, partly to see what my psych guy said about me after my January appointment. There wasn't anything particularly mind blowing there as we'd covered it all in the psych appointment. Being referred on to cognative therapy and psychotherapy, being kept under the mental health team's care as ongoing, no I don't want a change of drugs. Nothing surprising, nothing mindblowing - just yet more waiting around for referral appointments to happen. And they wonder why I periodically get sick of it all and self discharge from mental health care. Speaking of mad-as-a-hatterness I was reasonably gratified to learn that Jennifer Dangerfield of The Art of Curiousity is another bipolar babe. I don't know why I find that gratifying other than I admire her work, she's another Brit and unless I go out of my way to look (ie on dedicated forums) I rarely come across anyone 'openly' bipolar. Like being closet gays but with more stigma, and you can have a sex life even if you do hide it from the entire world *weird exasperation/irritation/amusement mix going on here*. I won't get on my mental healthcare soapbox or I'll never stop.

Geoff's off out tonight with Jan & Darren which is fine - only Finn & Jay here as its half term and Cam has gone to stay with the in-laws. Finn will be asleep within an hour if he's not already which leaves me free to get on with stuff that desperately needs doing. Mainly stuff directly relating to making money. Its a case of screw the Big Plan this week. Its a good plan. In fact its a GREAT plan. But it does involve long term slow and steady buildup of contacts, reputation and publishing which while will do wonders for business, doesn't help me pay the bills this month. So I'm having a focus-on-sales week. Newsletter to write, a squillion ebay listings to put on 10 day runs (I want about 1000 extra live for the end-of-the-month buying spree). eBay is a bit of an art form in itself. Sometimes having everything running quietly on 'background' shop listings is a good idea, sometimes going all out with the more expensive but more exposed 10 day auctions & Buy Now listings is better. After 5 years I'm still doing it largely by feel, and I currently feel that an extra thousand prominent listings is a Good Plan for the start of march.

Geoff saw a cat being hit by a car on his way back from collecting Finn. Just round the corner but it was gone when he walked back round to check (looks like the car that hit it stopped and hopefully took it to a vet). We've accounted for all our likely suspects but one so I'm keeping an eye out for Mini as Geoff thinks it was a tabby or a grey and Mini is tabby. Somehow I think I'm going to be reasonably agitated until I've found her. I'm trying not to think about it too much.

And finally, Darren was diagnosed as longsighted a week and a half ago, and got his glasses on Thursday. He looks... I dunno, older in them? Seems perfectly happy to have them though.