Wow, it’s been a month, my birthday month in fact. Yes, despite my advancing years, I still celebrate my birthdays for as long as I can get away with.

As part of Birthday month, I went to see the Harry Potter Cursed Child play. I thoroughly enjoyed it and I hope to see it again in another year or so, it was truly spectacular.

I got treated to dinner by my loving husband.

I got to celebrate my birthday with some of my adorable nephews and nieces. Can you spot the allergy free cake? Not as good as my usual Burch & Purchese birthday cake, but at least all the kids could partake in this creation by Tidbit Cakes.

Quite a bit of ‘alternative’ crafting happened this month.

I’m still working on the layout of my pinwheel quilt.

Have I even told you about this project? After a crafting weekend away with my quilting friends in March, the quilting bug finally bit.

I haven’t absolutely decided whether or not to put sashing between the blocks (which I would make a pale blue). I don’t think I could possibly make more than the 121 pinwheel blocks already in the works…

Last weekend I took a Polymer Clay class with The Polly Collective. It was a super fun day. Sheree is a great teacher.

This is my first ‘slab’ piece. Looks kind of like a pizza.

Before squishing…

This is the slab after squishing…

And these are all my cut-outs. The fronts of future pairs of stud earrings. So much fun.

This ‘cane’ slab was my next sample. The pieces are cut from a ‘candy cane’ made up of different colours then laid over the top of a thin slab of clay.

This is the slab pre-squishing

Sheree described how her design process is like riding a train, and how you just have to stay on board even if you’re hating how it’s going (to the bitter end). i.e. a train wreck… but then there’s always foil and that makes anything look better. I kind of felt like that when I was making this ‘caned’ piece. I felt like I had taken my cane too far (the details got too small), but then I mixed it up with some of the original cane off-cuts and then it didn’t look quite as shite. I even got compliments!

The slab after squishing.

There were a few other techniques demonstrated in the afternoon, that I’m going to try at home. I got a few supplies and tools to take-away to have a play.

Oh ooo – a new craft…