April 2008

Ten people attended our April meeting, including three guests, two of whom became our newest members. Welcome, Carole and Sharon! We all had a lot of fun as Nance Ross taught us how to make an articulated teddy bear. She brought three delightful examples, as well as pictures. As expected, each participant’s bear developed its own unique personality. Some participants had time to bake their bears, and others will finish at home.
Our raffle featured four drawings with items donated by April S., Nance, Penni Jo, and April G. Cassy won one drawing. It is alleged that the other three drawings were won by Nance’s three teddy bears, but they’re not talking, and neither is Nance!
The book selected in the library drawing was ***400 Polymer Clay Designs***, published by Lark Books. It will be purchased for our guild library this month.
Our upcoming schedule is as follows:
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**May 10:**Inro Box with Penni Jo
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**May 31:** Play Day. Location TBA.
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**June 14:** Rubber Stamping Techniques with Angela
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**July 12:** TBA
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**August 9:** Ink Jet Transfers with Shirley
During the business portion of our meeting, we discussed the following:
Angela, our treasurer, reported that our checking account total is $357.24. We now have a total of 14 members.
Angela read an e-mail message thanking the guild for its donations to **Hearts for Heroes**.
Angela announced that she is making application to the IRS for 501(a) non-profit status for the guild and asked for help from anyone who had been through the process before.
Angela recapped our play day discussion with Cindy Matteson regarding the guild’s future involvement with the **Bottles of Hope** project. She voiced her hope that we would commit to it, perhaps doing a once-a-year event at which we would donate our bottles to cancer patients. Nance has volunteered to be coordinator of our effort. It was suggested that members find out whether their local church youth groups might be willing to participate. Nance volunteered to teach these groups how to work with clay. Some members took home more bottles to decorate. Angela suggested that if members know a current cancer patient, they could give their bottle directly, rather than saving it for our event.
April G. brought up the possibility of bringing in a nationally known polymer clay artist to present a workshop, as the North Texas Guild has done. It was noted that the cost would be prohibitive for our small group, but we may look at the possibility of partnering with other groups in the region at some future time.

Thanks so much to everyone who came out to the Bottles of Hope Play Day, and thanks especially to our speaker, Cindy Matteson. Cindy was very sharing about her journey with breast cancer & her ideas for setting up a Bottles of Hope program locally. She even brought each of us a pink ribbon teddy bear!
We discussed the following:
* Cindy would love to see us have a special event in conjunction with a local hospital (perhaps Baptist or Integris Cancer Centers), where we deliver our Bottles of Hope to cancer patients & survivors. According to the organizer of the Kansas City event, we would need 75-100 bottles to make such an event worthwhile.
* Cindy suggested we might get high school art classes involved — not only would they enjoy learning about the clay and helping create the bottles, but this would help us build up our bottle supply. She knows some folks at the local high school and will help us look into this. Other similar possibilities mentioned were girl scouts and the YMCA.
* Cindy mentioned the possibility of putting together a few sample bottles, then making contact with the media, to start getting the word out about the program.
Angela created a handout with information on Bottles of Hope. She has made the handout and a video available on her site.
We had five people in attendance, and after Cindy’s talk, folks stayed around for several hours creating gorgeous Bottles of Hope. We ended up adding several bottles to our collection, and each person took home a few bottles to cover at home. We have *lots* of bottles (over 200), which will be available at all of our meetings for folks to take home and cover.
Thanks to all for a creative & fun-filled play day!