I love playing with clay

What I love about clay, aside from messy hands at the end of a lovely afternoon's sculpting, is how simple it is.  You grab a lump of the muddy stuff and an idea and away you go...

Your idea evolves depending on how well the clay is working and by the end of an hour you usually, on a good day anyway, have a creation better than the idea you started with.  Very satisfying!

At the moment I am focusing on Christmas.  Yes I am aware it's only August but I like to get ahead, and with a baby due at the beginning of December time for clay will be very limited indeed!.  

Also, I want to open a Folksy and an Etsy shop.  Yup, after yonks of wanting to have a whirl at selling some of the stuff I make I have finally decided to take the plunge!  I decided to go with clay modelling for my first foray into selling online as clay is so familiar to me, it is something I find endlessly enjoyable and which comes easily to me.  Working with clay is a very natural way for me to take an idea to the point of a finished creation.

The added advantage is that it is very de-stressing!  A piece of clay dries out relatively quickly, and if you are working on a figure you have to finish it before it dries out or it gets very difficult, if not impossible, to add more detail to it.  I can't walk away from the body of a Santa and come back two hours later to add the arms, so I have to find an hour and work through it, focusing the whole time.  This allows little room in my mind to stress about heartburn, money, work or whinging children (and husband!)

Yes it's safe to say I do love playing with clay, mud meddling as I call it :)

Welcome to Mud Meddling

So, here is my first post in my new blog about clay.  I am no stranger to blogging, I write another blog about my sewing and crochet antics (amongst other things) over at Snipsnaphappy's World, feel free to hop on over there and say hello.  But if it's the muddier stuff you are after then stay right here!

I started meddling with clay when I was about ten-years-old.  My mother bought me some Fimo polymer clay to keep me occupied on the long train journey to Scotland to visit my grandparents and I made two little grey elephants.  I am sure I still have them somewhere, when I find them I will definitely post a picture here. 

Over the years I kept on playing around with clay.  I started to make and sell little sculpures of hippies and other characters when I went to college before university.

More recently I have started using air-drying clay more and more, mainly because we had it lying around for kiddy craft projects, but also because it is much easier to just pick up a lump and get going.  With polymer clay there is always a lengthy hand-washing routine to go through first, particularly if working with the lighter colours.

What I love about clay modelling is how little you need to get started - a block of clay, a couple of "poking devices", like a tooth-pick or an old knife, a little water if you're working with air-drying clay, and..well...that's it...

I hope you enjoy your visit to my new blogland home, do come back again to see more of my clay work and join me for more mud meddling!