Wednesday, February 08, 2012

Busy, Busy, Busy!

I haven't posted in a while!  Sorry about that.  I've been busy building websites for my daughter's farm (I'm her marketing director) and also for myself.  I'm REALLY happy with how the sites I've built so far have turned out.  Mine aren't published yet, but you can see hers at www.myDHF.com

I've spent YEARS working on my websites in raw html - and now there are free sites with drag 'n' drop software that's so sophisticated, it's amazing!  I'm using Weebly.com to build these sites and their software allows slide shows and a bunch of things I'm not familiar with.  It was a bit daunting to figure out how to use the software to do what I had in mind, but once I understood it, I was off and running - and I'm still running, redoing my big art site now (which will take a while!)  But the end result is modern, clean and elegant, so I'm very happy with it!

I've recently published a Harry Potter ficlet, something very fluffy and fun.  You can read it on www.siye.co.uk or www.fanfiction.net - just search for "Abraxan" to find my stories.  The new one is "Stumbling Out of the Floo" and has already been nominated for two awards on SIYE!

I've also been playing with water clay, something I haven't done in years.  I had some ideas for small wall hangings I thought would be nice in terra cotta, so that's what I'm doing.  I've done a lion relief bust so far and have a horse relief in process.  Here's the lion - the horse doesn't look like anything yet.
The lion is 7 1/4" wide by 8" tall by 2 1/4" thick  He's on a round board with a Formica top - probably a cutout from a sink or something.  I wrapped the edges in duct tape to keep the particle board edges from shedding in the clay (yes, that's duct tape - it looks like it has paint splashes on it.  Got it at Walmart - they have quite a variety of duct tape there.)

I plan to try to cast this lion so I'll have an edition to sell, but I honestly have no idea how much they'll cost.  I'm trying to keep the costs as low as possible.  When I have the price figured, I'll post it.  In the meantime, how do you like him?

I'm spending the winter re-organizing and re-doing and so on, so I will soon have new websites, new jewelry to sell, and I'll be making a new brochure soon too.  Busy busy busy!