Life and Art

First, I apologize for my lack of posting over the last couple of months.  Between my day job and personal life, I have barely had enough time to breathe, let alone keep up with my blog posts and creating.  The past few weeks have been especially rough, so I finally made time today to relax and work with clay.

I picked a very familiar topic... One that I didn't have to think too hard about, one that I enjoy and would come easily to me, my mini Cthulhus.  And, what do you know...it took me forever to get his blasted eyebrow ridges to work, until I finally had to walk away!  Some days, nothing goes right.

But, that is life and definitely art.  Neither can be forced into the shape that you want.... Sometimes, you have to plead, cajole and pretty much bribe every deity and muse to make it work.  In the end, things turn out... It may not be as we wanted or wished, but it is what it is.

Cute animals are proven to be great for stress relief

You know how life sneaks up on you and before you know, time slips away and you are sitting there, wondering...what just happened?

That's been us for the past few weeks. 

I work, come home, do more work at home, sleep (maybe)...repeat.

On the weekends, we have had so many obligations, there has been hardly any time to do anything creative. It might be slowing down, but not for another week at least.

So!  I have been painting more Cthuluhs, but do not have pictures yet.  After doing some major cleaning on the house today for a party next weekend, I am hoping I will be able to take a break after work this week and clean.  

But, I did not want to leave you with nothing to see...so I thought I'd share pictures of a day trip we took recently to our favorite donut shop in the entire world, along with a mini animal park.

First, some cute goats from the animal park.  These guys just wanted to cuddle and be fed.  They were so adorable!  I want goats.  Badly.

The park also featured very pretty and flamboyant peacocks!  This guy followed us around with his tail spread, showing off. 

It was a fun trip and a beautifully cool day, so all of the animals were active, which was a great way to spend an afternoon.

This Tooth Only Looks Sharp

You might remember from my last post that I picked up a couple of Megalodon teeth at a local fossil/gem/mineral show.

The one on the left will be opened by my Dad later today as a birthday gift.  Ever since watching Discovery Channel's Shark Week, featuring Megalodon sharks years ago, we have both been fascinated by these massive creatures.

This gigantic shark lived for around 15 million years, before disappearing (one could hope) around 1 million years ago.  It has been classified as either Carcharodon megalodon, which would put Megalodon in the same family as the modern day Great White shark or Carcharocles megalodon, which is an extinct family of sharks.  Prehistoric-wildlife.com has a great amount of information on the Megalodon shark, as well as plenty of other fascinating creatures!

The teeth are the only part of the skeleton of a shark that we can find, since the rest is cartilage.  You will also notice that fossilized teeth come in a rainbow of colors...this is due to the type of soil sediment the tooth lands in when it is either shed or the animal dies.

I saw one tooth at the gem show that had a lot of rust colors, streaked with black.  I asked the finder if he had located it in an area with iron and sure enough, he found it in soil that was rich with iron oxide.

Here is the smaller tooth that I wire-wrapped this weekend.  I think I might embellish a little bit with a dangling Swarovski crystal or two...but I like the beauty of the piece itself to stand on it's own.  Who would have ever thought a tooth could be so fascinating?