New Year's Eve - December 31, 2025

I played with air-dry clay most of the day yesterday.  Sat down at the kitchen table around 6 a.m., watched a few more how-to videos, cleared a spot on the table, then went to sculptin'.   Really, I just mostly did "clay patties," cutting out simple shapes to experiment with paint. 

While I was fooling with the clay, how-to videos were running in the background, one after the other.  I eventually went "ear blind" to them until the algorithm fed me a Crafsman video, and I heard his voice.

"Has anyone figured out your true identity?" and more QUESTIONS ANSWERED!

He has some good how-to videos on his channel.

(And Craftsman, if you've googled yourself and have run across this post . . . can I be in your tribe?)  :)

Anyway, I'm going to spend today trying to figure out UV resin.  I have the basic materials.  I just poured some clear resin into a jewelry pendant mold and have set in the sun on the back porch to cure.  It's cold outside (39 degrees); I don't know if that will delay curing time or have no effect at all.  I have a UV lamp, and I'd prefer to use it outside, too, for my next pour (which will be resin colored with alcohol inks).  

Last night, I did a tiny watercolor landscape painting on an un-coated 2" round disk of air-dry clay.  I'm curious to see if it will show through the resin pendant.  

The thing I'm most anxious/excited about it playing with colors.  I only have one little bottle of resin, so I can't go buck wild with experiments if I want to have any left for a "keeper" piece.  

I just went out to check the clear resin pendant that was on the porch.  Earlier, I noticed that the sun had moved, and so I took the mold out to the yard and set it on top of my cold frame.  I'd noticed some little bubbles as I was pouring, and I tried to pop them, but just made them worse.  But since this pour is only a test, I didn't worry about the tiny bubbles.  Since I moved the mold, a MONSTROUS bubble has developed.  Good thing this is just a practice piece!  I'd better go back to the how-to videos, and pay attention this time.

Santa Claus brought me a big easel.  Earlier this morning, while I was rummaging around in the cabinet looking for some markers, I found two cheap house-painting-type brushes (I'd bought them for use on the magnificent oil landscape I'm going to do one of these days 😉).  It seemed that there was no better place for them than in the tray on the easel.  When I approached the easel with the brushes in my hand, I had an urge to whack them against leg of the easel, a la Bob Ross, just for sport.  But I didn't.