Just returned from a few days away to Margate with five wonderful people - all clayers! Retiring was difficult for me, I felt I'd lost an important role, and didn't want to fill my time with just anything, or worse, nothing. I also missed the camaraderie and social contact of my work colleagues, but again, I'm rather fussy about friends, and not the most sociable person unless I have things in common with people. Having this group of friends fills my soul in the most meaningful way (clay, laughter, food!.) I also have my American clay friends who are equally important, just a bit far away!!! Claying for me provides an outlet for creativity, and friends. Just have to share one more photo of our time away, this one with Basil my dog in - he came too :)

Thank you to everyone who has so far subscribed to my mailing list, giving me permission to 'pester you' as my husband said most rudely. I decided to give away the latest frog pen tutorial to one subscriber, and the winner is Diann. Congratulations Diann, hope you enjoy it. 

​Since my slight obsession with frog, dragon, turtle and owl pens, I've been focussing on my hare. While I was away I made lots of canes to cover the hare, and when home did another two days making canes. These are the ones I made while away.

I've now made two hare bodies, and enough canes to cover them - that's the scary part. However, I have a nagging little grandson asking me to read the 'find the poo' book, so the hares won't be dressed until he's in bed. 
Here's the canes made into thin strips ready to put on the body. I think I'll do a tutorial of one of the canes and do another prize draw. It can be any cane apart from the Sarah Shriver ones (the green weave one and the red and green hexagon one) or the Jon Stuart Anderson one (the orange and black repeating patterned one). All the others are mine so I can share them. Just put a comment in the facebook post of which one you'd like and I'll make the most popular. Here are the rest.

Right, I'm now needed for Nanny duty, the 'find my poo' book won't read itself. I'll leave you with the hares, and the covered ears, which is as far as I've got.

I've just finished the tutorial for the frog pens and am actually rather pleased with it! It's not a very British thing to say is it? I'm sure I should be more self-effacing and modest, but I like it!!! I had a love/hate relationship with my frogs, I wasn't happy with them for a long time so left them, and came back to them a while ago and they behaved and became a tutorial! I've learned over the years that if something isn't going well, just put it to one side, it's not it's time to shine. 
My plan is to make tutorials for a dragon pen, a turtle pen and an owl pen, but although I've made the pens, the tutorials take a little longer. However, here they are.

I'm not entirely  happy with the dragon eyes, so they will be changed before I do the tutorial, but I've had a lot of fun with these pens. 

Now for the fun part. I'm going to give away a copy of the frog pen to one of the people on my mailing list. It did make me laugh yesterday when I asked my husband if he'd subscribed and he said "yes, and ticked the box to say you could pester me with emails!". I'm not sure 'pester' was exactly what the text said, and as I'm terrible at marketing it's unlikely I shall be pestering anyone :).
So, thank you to the people who have already subscribed, you will already be in the draw. 
The tutorial will be on sale for £10 on the Clayaround website for people living in Britain. Unfortunately there are all sorts of problems with tax when selling downloads to people outside the UK so I'm in the process of setting up an Etsy shop (never thought I'd say that)  so that everyone who wants to can buy my tutorials. 
I'm off for a lovely few days away with clay friends and my dog and plan on making a lot of canes, so will share what I've made in another post. Let's hope I can become a little more regular in posting, I don't feel 6 monthly is really trying! 

Yes, I've done it, I've finally retired from my job as a mental health Occupational Therapist. This was a very hard decision to make, but the right one, and now I have the mental and physical energy to focus on my claying, and boy am I enjoying it!!
I decided that I needed to make the clay "wash its face". I've never heard of that expression and when my sister said it I thought she was joking, but apparently it means 'pay for itself'. As I like to make large orders of clay with Clayaround, I need the clay to make me some money so I can continue with this rather expensive, but very enjoyable habit.
My three prong approach is to sell tutorials, run workshops, and go to craft fairs.
The first is well under way, I've written four tutorials from book 2 and four brand new ones. They are sold at clayaround.com     ​https://clayaround.co.uk/product-category/helen-cruickshank-tutorials/ 

I've also been working in collaboration with Penny from Clayaround to make starter kits. I've been to several places where I've either talked or demonstrated polymer clay, and every time people want to know if there are any starter kits anywhere. Although it is easy enough to buy a basic polymer clay kit, the two starter kits that have been put together include absolutely everything you need to make either beads or cover pens. I've written a tutorial for each and you don't even need a pasta machine. 

sThe kits include five blocks of Sculpey Premo clay: black, white, cobalt blue, fuchsia and zinc yellow. With these colours you can make almost any other colour and the tutorials each explain about colour theory and how to mix basic colours. 

Okay, that's the tutorials part done, the second part of the three pronged approach to the clay face washing project is teaching. Now this is my favourite part, I absolutely love teaching. In my job I used to run groups and that's the part I miss the most so teaching polymer clay is obviously going to be my favourite thing to do. I'm happy teaching on line with zoom, but have also converted my spare bedroom which was my office, into a small polymer clay studio where I can teach up to four people face to face. I've joined craftcourses.com who organised a vast array of different craft classes throughout the UK, but so far polymer clay isn't that well known. I shall do what I can to change that!
My first workshop was going to be the flower brooch that can also be a pendant; I've had such fun designing and making these, and my mother and sister are my best customer!

I'm working on arranging an online workshop, just need to think of what to teach; the flower pendant/brooch, a cat heart pendant, or a turtle pen which I'm currently working on, and which obviously needs a little more work as my husband has named the first one I made "turtle on a stick of celery".  Mum thinks it's more like a leek - neither of which were the effect I was after. 

I played about putting it on a blue blend background and adding seaweed and starfish, but although it looked better than the celery turtle, it just wasn't good enough in my opinion, and it was also bulky to hold. I've decided to make canes of fish, seaweed, starfish and shells and add thin slices to a blue blended background. It will take a while to make nice canes but I'm hoping it will be more effective (and less resembling of a vegetable!!!).
The third part of my cunning plan is to go to craft fairs, something I said I'd never do again, partly because I'm rubbish at talking to the general public and partly because I hate selling. However, I've been persuaded to give it another go as a way of promoting my workshops, so the first one will be at the Five Parishes show in Peldon Essex where I'll be demonstrating in the main tent. I'm actually rather excited.
The last bit of news is that I'm now the President of the British Polymer Clay guild. I'm very lucky to have a good committee supporting me - especially Denise who helps me navigate the website - and we've already run one weekend retreat and are planning another one next March. For £20 a year I think it's just such amazing value for what you get - masses of free tutorials, videos, information, monthly prize draws, a facebook group and so much more. I'm hoping now covid is hopefully behind us, to have more workshops, both online and face to face, so watch this space.
I think that's enough for now, my aim is to write another blog post a little more speedily than the last one, and I'll hopefully have some better turtle pens to show you all!

Well, Game of Shrooms day is nearly here; 8th June 2024, when artists from all over the world hide their mushroom-related art for others to find and keep. 
I've really enjoyed doing this for the first time this year, and just hope that a few people will come and find my mushrooms. I also decided to do a separate hunt for the children in my close, and made an extra 16 mushrooms so the 8 children can find two each.
People are always asking me why I do so much, and I remember something my grandmother always said. "People do what they want to do". 
It's so true. I love claying, I love making people happy, and put the two together and a mushroom hunt is not going to involve just a couple of mushrooms, it's going to involve nearly 30, and two hunts.
However, what I don't do is housework, ironing, gardening, decorating, make up, go to the pub, and many other things. My excuse is that I don't have time, but going back to what Nanny said, I would make time if I wanted to do it - I just don't!

Below are some of the ones for the children's hunt. I'm rubbish at clay faces, but think I got away with mushroom faces :) 

The other clay project in my life at the moment is a charity workshop. 
My close friend is very involved in a charity called 'Make Seconds Count'. This is from their website.
Make 2nds Count is a UK-wide patient and family focused charity dedicated to giving hope to women and men living with secondary breast cancer.
Research into secondary breast cancer is underfunded. Make 2nds Count’s mission is to fund secondary breast cancer research which contributes to advancing an increased quality of life for patients.
Our Support programme has a focus on quality of life and helping patients affected by this incurable disease by informing, sharing and offering practical advice & support.
It's a fantastic charity and gives so much support to people with secondary breast cancer. So, when I was asked by my friend if I could suggest something she could do with polymer clay for around 40 ladies at a retreat weekend, I offered to run it myself. A holiday involving me, my husband and our two dogs, with the added bonus of clay and seeing my friend! Happy days.
I have three hours to help 40 people make a fairy house from clay and a small jam jar. I don't think I quite realised how much preparation this would entail........

40+ ladybirds ready to make up.

40 fairy house tops - which will look like mushrooms - more mushrooms :)

And 40 laminated sheets which combine as basic instructions, and a board to make the houses on.
I'm so looking forward to this event. I'm expecting a lot of laughter and fun!
Once game of shrooms and the charity event are over, I'll continue with the Sicily canes. I made a couple I'm pleased with, one I am very much not pleased with, and a kaleidoscope cane where I just threw all the spare bits of cane together and it worked really well! Sometimes effort does not equal results!
So, off to do more fairy house prep, and gear myself up to getting up early to plant  my mushrooms before people (fingers crossed) come and look for them. 

Yes, I did spell it correctly. Game of Shrooms is a once yearly event where artists from all round the world make mushroom-related art and hide it on a specific day for others to find and keep for free. I've decided to participate this year, and am up to three mushrooms so far. Game of Shroom began in 2019; it is a game, similar to the Easter Egg Hunt, but by artists, and mushrooms not eggs!
The artist (me) will then provide hints on Social media, like Instagram and Facebook, which is challenging as Instagram is a bit of a mystery to me. The key is for their followers, (not sure I have followers, but stranger things have happened) who live nearby to find the art piece, They then hopefully take a photo of the mushroom art they've found, tagging in the artist, in this case www.blueseabirdclaydesigns.com on facebook or Instagram.
I have no idea if anyone will look for or find my shrooms, I really need to get better at Instagram and post hints of where they are. But if anyone is interested I live in Copford, Near Colchester, Essex, and the day of hunting is the 8th of June 2024. 

I'm currently in Sicily for a few days before travelling to Tuscany to celebrate my sister's birthday. Oh I love Italy; the food is wonderful and the colours!!!!! I love the ceramics and artwork, and spend a lot of time just looking at everything and taking photos. One of the things I like to do when away is work out a colour palette of the area, and Sicily is proving difficult because there are so many lovely colours, and I'm trying not to stick with the ones I usually use. Here are the photos I've taken so far (well, to be honest here are a few of the photos I've taken, I have many many more on the camera).

This is the one I'm going to use mostly I think. I have to have lemon in it as Sicily is so well known for lemons, and the light blue is everywhere, and not a colour I usually use. I've been living on pistachios for the past two days, so this green is perfect. If you haven't had pistachio ice cream, or to be more Italian, Gellato, then you haven't lived. I'm making sure I'm definiely living by having pistachio tirimisu, pistachio brittle, pistachio liquore, and pistachio biscuits...... you can't take chances with these things :). 

Then I have to consider canes. and both the pictures above are from tables, one a cloth and another a table top. Soooooo many ideas for canes, so much inspiration. I'm going to take a pencil and paper on the plane on Friday and sketch out some cane ideas. I always use plane journeys to do fun things.
​

And as well as inspiring colours and canes, there's so much inspiration for projects to make with said zillions of canes - because I always make far far too many to know what to do with. So, I'm thinking some nice fish for the bathroom wall to go with the 6 seahorses already on there, and a cactus plant, not quite as large as this one, with each 'leaf' being a different cane pattern. 
I'm off to Tuscany on Friday, so will be making another palette, and no doubt find more ideas for projects, and perhaps design some more mushrooms. Please look me up on Instagram and follow me, but don't be alarmed if you comment on any facebook posts involving mushrooms, and get replied to by someone promoting different types of mushrooms. I've had to delete so many unwanted posts about 'medicinal mushrooms' which is amusing, but I really don't want to be thought of as a magic mushroom supplier!!!

So much has happened over the past year; an amazing trip to America, and semi-retiring which has given me more time to spend on claying. However, not being paid for a full time job has also meant that my clay 'needs to wash it's face' - a saying my sister taught me which basically means it needs to pay for itself. That means the dreaded 'selling' word. I hate selling, I glare at potential customers at craft fairs so they move on quickly, and prefer to give my creations away. But...... clay doesn't grow on trees, so it needs to make some money.
But first, something more fun. I was invited by Dr Ron Lehocky to be the 'dessert artist' at his invitation only retreat in Kentucky. This meant speaking for around an hour for three evenings, talking about my clay and demonstrating. It was a huge honour to be invited and my friend Donna Baratta (a superb clay artist) and I went there last October. It was a blast, the Americans are so lovely, so welcoming, and talking like the queen didn't hurt either (their words not mine). The retreat was full of such amazing clay artists, all willing to share their knowledge and expertise, and it truly was an honour to attend. I talked about how I became involved in polymer clay, how I got my inspriation, and other things in my life. The project I chose to demonstrate was a wall-hanging seahorse. 

On my return home I decided to take the plunge and start selling my work. I applied to rent a shelf at the Dedham Art & Craft Centre, and initially tried to sell bangles.

I sold two banges - one to my mother! This was not turning out to be a profitably selling experience, so changed to Christmas decorations, it was November, so I thought they'd sell well.

I sold about 8! Oh well, time for a change. I spoke to one of the ladies who manned the tills at the centre and asked what sold best, the answer was 'earrings'. I've never wanted to make earrings, mostly because I don't wear them, but decided to try. I looked at the earrings on sale at the centre and decided that there were no animal ones, so I'd focus on these.

These are just a few of the designs. I also made dogs, turtles, seahorses, owls and ghekos. So far I've sold one pair but I am feeling very positive, they've only been in the shop for a week and January is not a good time for selling. I've also enquired about two other venues, one being the Mercury Theatire, where I thought I'd sell more serious earrings and pendants.

Only time will tell whether I sell or not, but boy am I having fun claying! This, after all is what it's all about, having the time and mental space to create and play. 

 I decided when my grandson Toby was born, nearly two years ago, that I'd write a book for him. Several people have suggested I do this, using my clay animals as the illustrations and story, so that's what I've done. I don't think Julia Donaldson will have any sleepless nights over it, but hopefully Toby will like it, and I've had a lot of fun making it.
Because the book is in rhyme, I had to make more animals. Gheko is not an easy animal to rhyme with, nor is rabbit, so a pig, sheep, squirrel and mice were made to order, just for the book. Here's the cover and back.

Of course I had to make my dog, Basil. Every book should have a Basil in it.

One of the projects I finally finished recently was crewel embroidery in clay. My grandmother used to make wonderful crewel embroidery items, and I remember her showing me once, saying that she never followed a pattern, just used to make it up as she went along. She also cooked like that and was a wonderful cook. 
Anyway, I digress (spot the person on a diet, always thinking of food), I found an old crewel embroidery book, made a clay palette of colours, and then started making wool. Now I've worked out how to do it, it's easy, but boy did it take a while to sort out. This is why artists get so cross when someone uses their ideas and doesn't credit them. The wool may be simple to do, but the hours of work behind it to get it right, wasn't so simple. 
The British Polymer Clay Guild are very kindly going to run the workshop - I couldn't do it without the wonderful Cara Jane and Debby Wakely sorting out my technical issues! It's going to be on October 9th, by zoom, and hopefully a few people will attend. Here are some of the things I've made with it.

As you can see, it can be used on many things, I particularly enjoyed making the light switch surround, but it really bugs me that it doesn't fit properly! Problem is, it wasn't quick making it, so I'm not going to make another one. I'll just have to live with the imperfections, and try not to twitch every time I look at it!

I've been quite busy making things for the cat charity, Colchester Caring for our Cats, before long I'll have enough projects to make into a tutorial book, which I can sell for them. Cat pendants and earrings were my latest makes. and this tea-light holder.

The problem with being creative, but not technically minded, is that I have lots of ideas, I then think I'll make them into a book, then I get stuck as I can't remember how to do this, or that, and of course I never wrote it down two years ago when I last did something similar. This time I'm going to be more sensible. I have a lot of pieces of paper with scribbles of passwords, apps, websites, how to do things etc, which I'm going to put in some sort of order and keep safe. I'd bought 10 barcodes last year  - obviously thinking I was going to write lots of books! - but it took me two hours to find them. 
It took me a further five and a half hours to find out how to access the email associated with my website, and just now when I tried to update some photos on the home page here, I had to give up as they all appeared the size of a postage stamp.
All I can say is that I make very good tea, and am not bad at clay. 
No-one can be great at everything!
The children's book will be out hopefully on 13th August, on Amazon, so I hope you like it if you buy it. 

Finally, around four years after the first book, book two has been completed and published. I decided after the first book that I'd be more organised this time and make each project into a tutorial straight away, but funnily enough this didn't always happen! It's just so difficult working out my weird and haphazard notes many months after I've finished a project. My notes are incredibly random and discombobulated, and if I write them up straight away I understand them, but a few months later and it's like reading Hebrew. Perhaps book three will be different.............

So, above is the front and back of the book, and I think the back says what it contains. I was a bit concerned that the price on Amazon was £36, when I'd set the book for £28, but it has so many photographs, nearly 1,370, that it's probably to be expected. I just like to show people photographs of each step so everyone can do the projects. I always like pictures to learn from as opposed to just words, so am assuming everyone else is the same! 
I'm actually very pleased with this book, and really hope than anyone who buys it likes it too. I've tried to make it a mix of sculptures, jewelry and other things, however, I never really plan to design a particular thing, I just look around for inspiration, and eventually get an idea, think about it a lot (usually on the way to work in the morning), and it finally becomes a project. For example, I saw a ornament of a metal flat cow on a friend's shelves, and thought that it was a great idea, so many months later designed a polymer clay flat cow, which was one of the Polymer Clay Adventure projects I submitted.

This book really tested my perfectionist traits. If I wanted to make it as I wanted to, it would be ready in around 2025, so I decided that my mantra was going to be 'it's good enough'.
Funnily enough, I'm good at telling other people this, but rubbish at following my own advice. 
However, I'm not thinking about book three, which is funny as I'd decided not to write another one, but people are so nice about my book, especially my Irish friends, that I think I might, just, possibly, think about it :) 

​So what's in the book:

So, apart from the book, the other thing I've been rather focused (read obsessed) on is my yearly Christmas cat tree decoration project. I decided to make 100 cat decorations in order to make £600 for the Colchester Caring for our Cats charity. For those who don't know, this group of lovely people helped me get my cat back when he escaped at the vets, and I've tried to support them ever since. 

In the end I made over a 100 cats, and made £714 for the charity. I'm already working on next year's fundraising project.
I'm now in that lovely position where I can sit back and think about what I want to do next. The problem is that I have three ideas and not sure which one to pursue. I think it's going to be the Crewel embroidery one. My grandmother used to do lovely Crewel embroidery and I'm going to try and re-create this in clay.
In between working, getting ready for Christmas, looking after my many animals, and cooking the odd meal for my long-suffering husband!
Hope you all have a lovely Christmas and New Year, and look forward to sharing my clay obsession with you all in 2022. And fingers crossed, covid willing, we'll be able to meet and clay together as well!

I wanted to make something that was decorative, yet functional, with an original cane design, and that could be adapted to make a pendant. This little snail is an ornament, a ring holder (very sexist I feel saying that women like to take their rings off to do the washing up, but hey ho, my mother always does so that's where I got the idea from), and the cane can be made into a pendant, as below:

This little snail made me smile. 
It made the people I gave it to smile. 
It made someone who had lost a family member know that I was thinking about them.
It gave me a lot of fun creating it.
It gave my friend Linda lots of fun making up colour combinations for the shell cane.
It gave me the opportunity to teach my first on-line clay workshop with the British Polymer Clay guild, where 60 people made the snail.
And most of all, it made me realise that I have a style. I said to my friend Penny Vingoe of Clayaround (a wonderful place to buy clay and all clay needs) that I wanted to have a style, and about three years ago told me that I DO have a style. I'm a slow learner, but I actually think she's right!

So, apart from slimy creatures, what else have I been doing?
You'll notice the header for the blog is 'A clay for all seasons', well, that's the title of book 2.
Yes, finally I'm nearly there with the second book. I'm so pleased with this book, I've had such lovely reviews and comments about the first one, and it's very similar, same sort of quirky designs, with canes and other techniques included, but I feel I've evolved in this book. I've attended a lot of workshops, absolutely love learning new techniques, and these have helped me grow as an artist and develop my own techniques and canes. 
It's again a book for everyone, from beginners to more experienced clayers, but I want anyone who is interested in polymer clay to be able to pick it up and make what I've made. Being an Occupational Therapist I'm quite good at adapting tasks to meet the demands of differing levels of expertise, so hope the book is suitable for all levels. Why 'Clay for all seasons' I hear you ask. Well, it gave me the opportunity to make four different page headers. Is that reason enough :)

There are 13 projects, three for each season with an extra one, with a real variety of pendants, sculptures, tea-light glasses,and Christmas ornaments, with techniques such as cane making, mica shift, silk-screening and steampunk. 
I'm hoping to get it out before Christmas, but it's more likely it will be January/February 2022.
This is a rather short blog post, but at least it's done!
My plan to set up a website and write regular blog posts was probably unrealistic once Covid struck, but hopefully will get easier now. I aim to get the book written and published, then probably look to doing more tutorials rather than another book, with a view to doing more workshops, preferable face to face, but also by virtual means. I suppose there has to be something good coming out of everything, and Covid has at least kicked dinosaurs such as myself into the virtual world, and even I now run therapy group happily on Microsoft Teams! You adage 'you can't teach old dogs new tricks' is obviously wrong!
Let's hope it's not 10 months before the next post.

However, I AM excited! For the second year I've been invited to teach at Polymer Clay Adventure (PCA 2021). Last year Pat the flat cow made an appearance, and it was so incredible seeing other people's 'Pats', and the way everyone put their own spin on them, there was even a flat dog! 
This year I've gone with cats - still with the animal theme. 

I'm going to teach a cat vase. Well, actually, I'm going to teach you how to make around 23 different cat designs and put them onto a vase. However, once you know how to make them you don't have to make a vase, you can make anything with them, I've made a pendant with my three cats on. 
For those who don't know what Polymer Clay Adventure is, it's a year long programme where 23 teachers teach their own projects, usually two a month. You are given a list of all the materials needed for each class, a prompt sheet of what to do when, and videos which show you exactly how to make the project. I of course have done my usual thing and gone totally overboard, and have done I think about 15 videos! At least I feel you get your money's worth.

So (I hear you ask), what do I have to do to enroll in this programme? What is it going to cost me?
Bearing in mind that the average simple PDF tutorial is a minimum of £12, for 23 full video tutorials you get it for $99. I know, I've switched between dollars and pounds, so, keeping to pounds sterling, that's about £77 for 23 tutorials, and a year to watch them. If you enroll this week the price is $99, but after that it leaps to $147, still incredible value, but really, why pay $48 extra!!!

In addition, if you sign up this week, you automatically get entered into the draw for a goody bag, and in one of these goody bags there is a golden ticket - a brand spanking new Atlas pasta machine.

So, for one week only, from the 18th - 14th October, the price is $99 for the 23 projects, and a chance to win a goody bag. I won one of these the year I entered the PCA, and it was amazing! 
I never know what angelina fibres were until I received that good bag ;) 
To join, go to https://gumroad.com/a/977859699  which will take you polymer clay adventure. Here are the 23 amazing tutors this year (I'm one of them, hear my squeal of excitement!!!!)

I just want to tell you a little bit about the history of the cat vase I'm teaching. I have three gorgeous cats; George, Pod and Casper. When I was designing the cat vase, Casper went missing. Because of covid we had to take him to the vet and hand him over in the car park. He managed to burst out of his cat basket and escape. We looked for him for a month, helped by a wonderful group called 'Colchester caring for our cats', who guided the hunt, supported me, and even provided a sniffer dog three times to help look for him. They were incredible, and after a month we managed to get him back. I'm going to donate the fee I get from my tutorial to this group, to help them look for other cats, and help other distraught owners like me, maintain hope that they'll find their cat. 
So, moving on from cats, what else have I been making?
Ages ago I bought this little set of 25 drawers, and it cried out to be made into an advent calendar, so here it is.

I had such fun making this. It's for my daughter who is a vegan, so I had to add sprouts and avocados to it. A lot of the drawer fronts were made with the same technique as the cat vase; it really is a versatile way of making fun projects. Despite a real mouse phobia, my favourite drawer is the skating mice! 
I'm currently doing a design course with a very experienced polymer clay artist. I'm loving this as it's pushing me out of my comfort zone. My aim is to make a pendant or necklace with the illusion of a fish jumping out of waves. Watch this space!!