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 :)
