The season of shadows:

I love polymer clay. I think it started from when I was a kid and my mom and I made dollhouse miniatures and we'd spend hours making little plates of food, plants, garden stuff. We'd be lost in creation for hours. We made bread clay with white glue and we'd use sawdust for the nuts on caramel apples.

Here's my first little online tutorial. I started making jack O lantern bracelets three years ago and these were such fun I wanted to share.

Start with orange soft polymer clay and form little balls, couldn't be easier. Kneading the dough first makes this much easier. Push an eye pin through the center of each of your little jack O lanterns and put them in the oven on warm for about 20 minutes. Take them out of the oven and let them dry.

You can paint faces on your little guys but you can also make faces with a black sharpie marker, they have all different sizes now and they are permanent. Draw your little face in black and then take a white paint pen and add your teeth, your eye balls, anything fun. Now use the sculpey glaze over each pumpkin and let them dry on glass. You can cut the eye pins smaller to add to a bracelet. Now if you love beads as much as I do you can add tons of beads. I posted a photo of an example above. Now...if you prefer flat pumpkins, just roll logs from those polymer clay strings and put the logs side by side and cut them into little 1 1/2 inch strands and pinch each end adding the top and a tiny little green leaf. Run the eye pin down the center being very careful not to puncture the clay so you can see it. The faces are a little tricker because of the bumbs but the pumpkins turn out so great. You can find photos of them at poetsummer.etsy.com or ebay at poetsummer. If you have any questions, drop me a note at Summerpoet@msn.com. Enjoy the season. I will miss summer this year but I am looking forward to the holiday season as well. Carrie.

Paula Cole Inspiration:

Lord make me a lightning bolt to burn off this ring
(comin' down, comin' down),
Lord make me a Skilsaw to cut through these chains
(comin' down, comin' down),
Lord give me the clarity to see through this smoke,
And salvage the woman comin' down.

And the rain fell and it fell and it fell. There was so much rain here that it broke records for rainfall and it seemed as though it would never stop raining. I knew there was trouble when I woke and while the house was very quiet three floors above the crawlspace I heard a strange noise and I realized it was the pump pumping water from below the house. I was freaked out, found Richie who assured me all was going to be just fine. We loaded up on junk food and candles in case the power blew, which of course it did the next morning but we were prepared. A neighbor offered an extension cord to his generator (who ever believes they will need a generator?) I used the bit of day light to work on some projects I had here and checked over at the studio to be sure all was dry there.

I know it's been awhile since I wrote a blog but life just moves too fast for me on occasion. Hours meld into days and days into weeks. I am working on opening a new shop on etsy this weekend and tweaking little things here and there to get ready. I am so excited. I love to play with fashion and hats and clothes so this really did spark some interest in my ever spinning head. And then there was the rain. We've had weeks of it, all at one time and when it's rainy I tend to put my head down and create just to pass the time until the sun shines again. And if we didn't have enough with the cats we have, well we've acquired another. We had three cats when we moved here and one passed. I think it was just the stress of the move. My son who always thinks that three cats is the perfect number to have (so they have someone to play with) talked me into keeping the dawg when she arrived. Well the rage of storms we had a few weeks ago produced a little boy cat to the door. He was fragile and tiny and starving. I swore we weren't keeping him that three cats was the cat limit to any house but as kittens tend to do he just grew on me. He has been given a name yet although we've kicked around snagglepuss and pusser, Jr. (our old cat pusser still holds a special part of our heart) and even minnie me becuase the doggie loves him so much and finally found a willing participant for her silly cat games. Just when I was cursing all the rain, it was the rain who carried this little bundle of love to the door. I looked for his siblings, perhaps a hungry mom cat but no luck. The mailman (who is a bigger cat lover than myself) tells me there were several stray litters a few blocks away but when I went to look for them they had all scattered. It was only last night that Richie mentioned that "what would another cat hurt at this point." I almost lost my mind and I am counting down the days very quietly until he's off about 300 miles away pursuing another degree.

I've been listening to Paula Cole lately. Her last album, yes the woman swinging on the tree on the cover, was so full of inspiration and I like the new one, it's growing on me. "I've forgotten who I used to be." seems to be the theme of the album and I wonder about that myself sometimes also. A few years ago adventure was the word of the day and Best Friend and I would be off pursuing some adventure that would leave us days at a time without sleep and it didn't seem to bother each of us at all. I miss those days. I like to believe I am a little more settled and wiser but there's a little voice in me that knows better and longs for a little instability and some pure adventure for the sake of feeling a little more on the edge.

Lord make me an arrow to pierce through the lies
(comin' down, comin' down),
Lord make me a lens to better see my life
(comin' down, comin' down),
Lord make me an instrument to sing away the pain,
This rushing river, comin' down.

I'm free, here in the mountains of peace may I be.
I see the greatness above and the smallness of me.

Lord I'm mistaken in the choices that I made
(comin' down, comin' down)
I made me a prison that should've been a man
(comin' down, comin' down)
Lord help me discover the courage to Be,
To handle these changes comin' down.

It's beautiful here today, those clear looming skies of the fall hanging over the trees just about to burst into color. The seasons keep changing, another baby due in the family this winter, life just swirling around. I have been so full of one new idea after another and find myself lost in beads and in the pursuit of the next thing this little business of mine will produce that will lead me on yet another avenue to share my art. I love all the notes I received about my little blog about my little minnie me copying all my new ideas. You are all so kind and so supportive. She responded in some crazy way on some blog (before she was found out she would write me long emails telling me how much she loved my work and admired me) hahahaha, it was so horribly written that all I could feel was sorry for her and wanting to sue her high school. It seems as though the zombies of ebay will follow you around for awhile. It has made me want to abandon ebay and it's insane nature all together but I built my business on ebay and I am trying to find a way to keep in touch with those customers I've developed there hoping more and more they will move over to etsy. I knew I was so over it when I saw she had made a shit house bracelet. You are what you create.

I'm free here in the mountains of peace may I be,
I see the greatness above and the smallness of me.
So free, here in garden awake consciously,
I see the greatness within; the greatness in me.

Lord I'm your instrument, I'll shoulder the weight,
Of feeling emotions in a deeper shade.
I'll be the one who puts them to song,
And liberate the heartache comin' down

Sometimes I fell this business I've started is the mountain and I get smaller and smaller as the numbers escalate. That's the reason I took some time to make a few shadow boxes, work on some clothing creations and even started a few altered art books. I need time away from the jewelry to be inspired by it all over again. I am trying to streamline a few things in my life to make some time for myself as the holiday approaches and the real craziness begins. I would hope that for all of you, that you would hire some help with the dirty details of life so that you could carve out a little time that is just for joy. I don't want to be overwhelmed by having a successful season only to find out in January that another season has passed where I worried more about work than about baking cookies with zach and sam, sat on a sofa somewhere playing super mario carts with the blonde bubble head, listened to Richie's grand plans for his next educational challenge. Ya know Craig if you are reading this, I always think about you in the fall, I think it's because of the harvest and the grand accomplishment that entails. You have been dancing around in my head.

If you have an interest in my art, you can find it at poetsummer.etsy.com or on ebay of course as poetsummer. You can email me at summerpoet@msn.com. Take care, Carrie.