A Eureka Moment.

Towards the end of last year, encouraged by family and friends, I decided to try and sell my minis on EBay. It was slow going with a sale here and a sale there and then just after Xmas things picked up and I was getting sales regular, and commissions, and I was busy making little teapots and sandwiches. That's good? right? well no not really as all my time was being taken up by making things to sell and the joy of making minis was being diminished by the pressure of keeping my shop stocked. Time for a re-think. February, in our house, is a funny month as Spring is around the corner and things are warming up, slowly!, and the DH and me are killing time waiting to go back up to The Lakes (9 days and counting) so I tend to use February as my New Year and use it to re-evaluate my life and what I want out of it. The decision was made, no more selling, I'm not going to make my fame and fortune that way, not that I'd want it, as there are far too many brilliant miniaturists out there for me to compete. As soon as the decision was made I felt free again to make minis for fun, I had a sale and a commission on the same day, ironic LOL, and my fingers have not been still since and my head is buzzing with ideas, onwards and up wards. You'll have to wait for piccies, as most of what I've made is for a swap group and I don't want to spoil things, the rest of it were tries and ended up in the bin.

As some of you may know, I have an uneasy relationship with Fimo, I can make things with it but it doesn't come easy. I've got a week of Annual Leave this week and made it my mission to get to grips with the stuff, with that in mind when I spotted a mini oven on EBay last week at an unbelievable price, I bought it. Like the rest of us I bake my Fimo in my regular oven but I am always wary of burning it, I get side tracked easily, and then having the problem of harmful fumes so a table top mini oven seemed the answer. Weekend came and went and, although I made minis, Fimo didn't rear it's ugly head. Monday came and went... Tuesday came and went.... and then yesterday morning Parcel Force delivered my oven.

So I couldn't put it off any longer, or how could I justify to myself the cost of the oven, I had to take the bull by the horns and confront my nemesis. The big problem I have is conditioning it so it is pliable. I've watched all the tutorials, I bought a pasta machine which helped a little, I tried putting it in a bain marie but to no avail, I just couldn't get  that darned clay to go soft. Now before you all start shouting through cyber space, I know about Quick Mix, I bought some a few months ago but even with that I couldn't make it pliable. I had to use that much of the stuff that it altered the constituency of the clay so that it didn't bake right. Emma gave me some Fimo a couple of weeks ago that was left over from a project she had been doing with her students at college and at the time I just threw it in my Fimo box and forgot about it. Yesterday I dragged my box out and saw that Emma had given me a packet of Quick Mix and as soon as I picked the packet up I could tell, even with the wrapper on, that is was different from what I already had, I could squish it!! It was soft and squidgy, unlike mine, turns out I had bought a bad packet of the stuff. Suddenly all my hard Fimo became soft and yielding, Eureka! I could now make it do what I wanted it to do. Although I am on Annual Leave that doesn't mean I have loads of time to play so I only made a few things, some Cumberland sausage rings, which I've made before, but this time they got done in super quick time and a pizza.

The next 2 days are busy with RL stuff so maybe at the weekend I will be able to play and create some more master pieces LOL Saying that on Saturday we are going up to the van to take stuff back, duvets etc which we brought home at the end of the season to wash. Talking of the van we went up a couple of weeks ago to check that things were OK, no water bursts or mouse invasions, and were confronted with a white out. We haven't had any snow at home this Winter but boy they'd had it there. Bracken and Moss haven't seen snow, being puppies, and just went loopy running round and round the van barking like mad. Great fun!

I'm off to clean the house now, boring RL stuff.

See you later.....


Forgot to say, I didn't make the veggie toppings, they are canes I bought off EBay.