2008 is supposed to be my year

I've decided to take as many mini-classes as possible this year, to expand on and enhance my skills. My sister says this sounds suspiciously like the taking on new media and its attendant spendiness, what with books and supplies and tools, that I usually claim to be trying to avoid. Yesterday I took a 3-hour class (more like guided play) on using Shiva PaintStiks on fabric. These are irridescent oil paints in a wax binder that allows them to be used like big soft crayons - drawing directly on the material, applying them to a piece of fabric and rubbing the paint into a stencil, putting a texture mat/rubbing plate/bold rubber stamp under the fabric and dragging the stick over the surface to pick up the design - lots of different applications. I have a piece of beautiful sable brown crushed taffeta that I want to highlight with gold paintstik and use for a ceremonial robe for one of the Theamorphs (this will probably involve sewing, which anyone who knows me will find hilarious. Just shush.)

In March one of my new acquaintances from the Guilded Lilies is teaching a class at Byzantium, our first-and-best local bead store, on bead embroidery. I've done some of that already, but if I let too much time lapse between attempts I forget how to do it and have to start over from scratch, so I think I'll let a pro help me out. She makes awesome beaded dolls, which is where my interest lies.

In April there's a 3-day class by a member of the GL on needlesculpting cloth doll faces and bodies - not positive I'll take it, as it's not really my thing, but it promises to be amazingly inexpensive and probably would be useful in the long run.

In June there's a Soldering 101 class at European Papers/the Columbus Center for Paper and Book Arts (CCPBA) that I desperately want to take. I have a soldering iron, lead-free solder, 1/4" copper tape, even a box of 1.5" x 1.5" Memory Glass - and haven't done a freaking thing with it. Mostly because I'm afraid of hopelessly screwing it up, even though I know that part of the learning process of pretty much everything is the process of screwing things up. Hopelessly.

So I have my monthly continued ed pretty well sussed out - we'll see what the rest of the year brings!