Well, here I am, sitting here breathing on my oxygen tube. My doctor decided that I needed to be on oxygen 24/7 due to my COPD. I have to admit that I can breathe a bit better, but I just don't like the idea of being tethered to a tube.

            I'm still able to do my crafting though, thank goodness. I've been getting into wood working. I go to the local thrift store & buy small side tables. If they are in pretty bad shape, I strip them don & refinish them. I'll have to take some pictures & post later.

I still fool around with my polymer clay too, but I've run out of ideas for that, other than making tons of beads that I'll probably never do anything with, but I do find it very soothing, smashing & smooshing clay, mixing new colors & whatnot.

               I've also been doing some glass etching with my little rotary tool & diamond burr tips. This is an awesome craft with almost immediate results. I'm somewhat impatient, so I like to see the results quick. Woodburning is also a great craft with quick results, depending on how intricate the piece is that your working on.

And I absolutley LOVE my Cricut Expression to cut vinyl into car window decals and T-shirt iron-ons. the only problem I have with all the crafts I do is deciding what to make. I go into my craft room & sometimes just stand there & look at everything, my mind starts going a million MPH and I don't know what to start working on first. I have a room on the main floor of my house that I use for a craft room and I also have my whole basement where I have another craft room, full of stuff too. 

Being a professional photographer, I have my portrait studio downstairs also. So when I do a photo shoot, I spend alot of time editing photos & getting them posted to my website

              When I get some of the stuff I've been working on done, I'll put up some pics here. I'm new to this blogging thing so I have a lot to learn about it.

               I'm also an addict.............to Pinterest. There are so many things in there that I want to try. I have tried a few things. The pin that shows how to refill a Swiffer wet jet bottle DOES work. I did that the other day & refilled my bottle with Pine-Sol & water. To buy the refills are so expensive, so I was glad that this actually worked

I haven't been here for awhile, I found this new gadget at Wal-Mart the other day that you hook up to your computer, hook up a vcr to it and you can transfer your old VHS tapes to your computer. So I've been playing around with that. It works!

         I got videos of my kids when they were little that I have put on my computer and uploading them to Facebook. Course I know my girls won't like them, but.oh well. I love to embarrass them, and I just found a new way to do it. LOL.

Here is one example. I actually was trying out my brand new camcorder. YAY!!! A new piece of technology  to play with. Of course this waaaaay before computers, cell phones & ipads, I thought I was on top of the world because I had a new video camera. I am glad though that I had it so I could capture moments of my kids growing up and using it against them when they got older & had kids of their own.

When I get all the videos put onto my computer, I'm going to burn copies of them to DVD.

I also have videos of when my triplet nieces were born at 30 weeks, but I will not post them online anywhere.

Hillery Portrait Studios

                                                           
My Website

Kortney

Grace

Kelsey

The Grand babies

Here is the link to my studios website. I have alot of my photography work there.

Crafts etc...

Since I just started this blog, I don't know much stuff here yet. I work on alot of crafts at a time & it takes me awhile to finish one thing. I just go from pillar to post working on different things.

I'm trying to teach myself how to paint, airbrushing, paper quilling and all kinds of things.

I have a big basement where I have my portrait studio, office and craft room. It seems like when I go downstairs to my craft room, my mind just goes blank. But when I am sitting idly, I have lots of ideas, but getting them out of my head & actually doing them is two different things.

I also make vinyl decals for cars & windows, I use my cricut to do these. I have alot of Coal miners that want decals, so I do have to get these done soon. I can also make T-shirt iron on transfers with my cricut .

I really need to make some videos & take pictures of these projects. Hopefully, one day soon, I'll get around to it.



Aside from being a photographer, I love to work on crafts. I have my kitchen done up in grapes, so I've been making my own accessories.

I've been playing around with polymer clay & trying to make things with it,

I came up with the idea of fusing clay onto glass & other mediums.

(it's not my original idea)

Since I since have  been playing around with polymer clay, I have  come up with different ideas on how to use it. I make canes, slice them into small slices to embellish items with.

For example, I have my kitchen done up in grapes, so I've made some embellishments to adhere to glass candle holders, vases etc. After baking the pieces for the recommended time, I wait till they are cool enough to work with. the possibilities are endless with polymer clay.

These are blank Christmas tree ornaments that I decorated with polymer clay grapes, leaves & curly q's

Baby food jar

Here are some of my grapes creations


In another post, I will show how I did these

I've also been making roses '



Items I used to create these:

1. Purple polymer clay
2. Green polymer clay
3. Brown polymer clay
4. Blank glass ornament
5. Glass jar
6. Clay machine
7. Sculpey glaze

Make sure your hands are clean, baby wipes does a great job to clean up. Condition all your clay until it's pliable to work with, make a bunch of little purple balls and set aside. I covered my jar with white original sculpey clay & smoothed it out as best I could. Place the little purple balls in the shape of a grape cluster and press gently into place. I freehanded the leaves from green, rolled out fairly thin (#3 setting on pasta machine). Use a craft knife to cut leaves out or you could use a leaf shape clay cutter. Place them on the clusters. Roll out brown clay into thin snakes. Put onto jar in swirly designs.

Bake in home oven or toaster oven at 275 degrees for about 15 mins. Allow to completely cool before removing from oven. Once cool, I used sculpey glaze to seal the whole jar & let dry.

 You could make these into candles, put flowers inside, anything you could think of.