Discouragement... and Hope

This week I've been bouncing around between the two!  I started off Monday morning determined to take a step in the right direction so I did something drastic:  I joined Weight Watchers online!  According to their plan, my goal is to lose only 6 pounds, and I've been trying very hard to stay within my daily points, but it's hard!  I'd really love to lose closer to 10 pounds, but I don't know if I have the will power... and tomorrow night I have a big retirement party to go to, as well as Easter coming up in a few weeks!  I'd love to be slim and trim for our trip to Italy next month so maybe that will be enough incentive to stick to it!

Later on Monday, I got a big disappointment.  Cloth Paper Scissors magazine listed the finalists in the Tunnel Book reader challenge and despite over 400 views and 8 positive comments in their online gallery, mine was not selected!  I wondered if something had gone wrong with the e-mailing of the photos - that's how surprised I was not to see my name on the list, and how certain I was that my mixed-media garden was one of the best there!  I felt angry and cheated - judging art can be so subjective - who are they to decide mine wasn't good enough?  I question their criteria - it seems like dark things are so popular these days, and mine was cheerful, innocent, and hopeful.  If I see a bunch of skulls and other ugly symbols on the tunnel books that make it into the magazine, I'll really consider cancelling my subscription.  I'm tired of ugly art being popular because it's different!


 But I tried not to dwell on it all week and moved on to my next projects.  After all, I make things because I enjoy doing it, not to sell magazines.  As a break from fabric, I began thinking about the next charm I need to make for the bracelet round robin.  This bracelet has a bird theme like the one I did last month, and the distressed "vintage" brass color of the chain is similar as well.  I purchased a mixed bag of bird charms in January in anticipation of these bird-themed bracelets, so I had the little dove in the bottom left corner in my stash which was a match for the chain.  The bracelet owner said she'd love to have little inspirational messages included if possible, and being it's a dove, I immediately thought simply, "world peace."

So I got out my polymer clay and began playing with ideas for a charm or bead representing the earth.  I decided to try making a cane, a technique with which I've had only mediocre results.  Here's what it looked like initially:

Then I squished it down enough so I could roll it like a log.  

After refrigerating it for a short time and slicing it up with a tissue blade, I got some reasonable representations of the earth.  I rolled the messier ones into earth beads that I might use for another project.

But I still wanted something that said "peace."  I thought about going out to the craft store and picking up a metal alphabet stamp set and some blank charms to stamp words on, but I resolved in January to Use What I Have, so I opted to try to imitate metal with polymer clay.  I mixed some gold metallic clay with some black to get that sort of distressed brass color, rolled it out flat, stamped it with my rubber stamps, and cut them with the mini cookie cutters, shown. 

The little Peace tags came out cute, but I'm not sure if I like the way they look with the dove and the earth discs.   

I don't have to mail this until April 1st, so I have some time to play around with some other possibilities.    Meanwhile, there's a new pope, tomorrow is Friday, and spring is on it's way - good reasons to be hopeful!  (Maybe I should celebrate with some ice cream....!)