Monday, April 07, 2008

Getting Started

When I discovered polymer clay, it was a medium I had never used. It looked very promising and I decided I wanted to try it out. Well, lazy me. I checked out some vendor sites and ordered a package with several colors. After all one color seemed boring. LOL

My package arrived quickly so like a kid I tore into it. I loved the colors and the feel of the clay. All of a sudden all kinds of "big" ideas popped up in my head but I didn't write them down. Needless to say I have no idea to this day what those ideas were. For all I know, they could have been really good...or bad. LOL

I really procrastinated picking up the clay and just doing it. I didn't want to waste it so I spent several days just thinking about it. Then I spent several days surfing the net, looking at what other artists had done and checking out the tutorials. Now I was at a total loss for inspiration so here I go to the book sites to see what I could find. Oh, I found some and then I ordered them.
More procrastination! LOL I finally got the books and spent quite a bit of time looking through them. I loved what I saw. I also noticed that many of the instructions were quite close to the ones I found on the web. I still didn't start. Really silly of me too because I didn't intend to buy it just to look at it. That is what I was doing though.

Finally I decided to just try it and see what happens. I pretty much prefer instant gratification so a large project was not in the cards. I wanted to see what this stuff does and I wanted to see now. LOL Well I took 3 colors, red, white and green...it was Christmas time. I played with them a while. That was called conditioning. I cleaned out one of my medicine bottles and started applying it just willy nilly.

So my first project was not a masterpiece but that was alright. I was starting to work with it and that was the whole point.




The bottle on the top left is my first project. After that I cleaned some more bottles and started playing with canes and techniques. I even moved on to making a pinch pot (upper right).

When I look back on those days, I wonder why it was so hard to get started. I do know I had a lot of negatives hitting me up side my head and I shouldn't have been listening to them. After all you can't have the experience if you don't do something about it.

Life gets that way sometimes. I shoulda, woulda, coulda but didn't. Many times I've gone through procrastinating about something only to realize it was much better just to do it. I did the same thing starting this blog. Why do some people do that? Well, now that it's in black and white staring me in the face, I'll just have to do something about it. More doing and less thinking about it.

Is there something you want to do but just spend time thinking about it? Well, now is the time to stop thinking and get doing.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing this with us. I love the bottles on the top row. Why not come and join the European Forum of polymer clay and also find out about the Carnival planned for 2009 in France. More details from my blog - Bijoux & Banter