The above photo is of a moss sculpture that I made for work via my bosses request. It’s about 5 inches tall, and I made it out of Sculpey clay, steel wire, acrylic paint, top coat nail polish, and a bunch of patience. I take my time on these because my boss actually pays me by the hour to do them– so the more time I spend on them, the better they are, and the more time I can be paid for! Of course, there’s a certain honor code that goes along with this sort of job. This sculpture didn’t take me more than 11 hours total. But every detail counts towards making a great sculpture– the little white dots are actually specks of white clay that I added to the surface with a needle tool, then gave a kiss of red paint to to imitate lichens and such. I had to make each one of the moss leaves/bracts individually, and working with wire as an internal structure to soft clay is never easy. Anyway, I need to make another type of moss sculpture as well– the things I do when I can’t spend another hour in the basement at work for the week…

In more exciting and innovative news, I’m making leaps and bounds with my knowledge of music and home recording technology. My goal is to make a Christmas CD to give to a few select family members. I was hoping to have a few copies by this week because I volunteered to play at the Ceramics Annual Holiday Sale, so it would have been nice to have a CD if anyone asked for it. Oh well. The effort I put into it will be better to just give to family.

The sale will be a good small gig. I’ve thought about volunteering for the past couple of years, but ended up being too shy and then my friends always have some sort of music already playing from an iPod dock. I haven’t shot the idea to the entire guild yet, but there was talk of hiring a guitarist anyway. I’ll be happy to play for free… some day maybe I’ll have a paid gig, but I’m not gonna ask the guild to pay me.