Altered Element design project - polymer clay and circle frame

There was some Sculpey Studio polymer clay in this month's Altered Element Design team package. I haven't used this clay before, and I must say it is very user friendly. To condition polymer clay, so that it is nice and soft so it's easy to use, you need to know whether the brand of clay conditions through pressure or warmth. I ran this through the Wizard and it didn't make much difference, but putting the package into my bra for a few minutes (nice and warm n there!) helped considerably! Once warm, I kneaded the clay for a few moments before pushing it into a Krafty Lady silicone mould. Which is when I discovered the only pitfall with this clay - it's so soft that it is difficult to unmould. Every time I tried the frame distorted as it came out of the mould.

I know could have baked it in the mould, but I wanted to make several frames, and bake them all together. So, I put the mould and clay into the freezer for 5 minutes. That worked perfectly, the clay frame popped out of the mould without any distortion whatsoever. I baked the frame, and found that this clay has a pretty matte finish, but with slight sparkle.

However, the frame looked a little dull, so I gave it a quick application of 'whitefire' Treasure Gold. It looks lovely now, all I need to do is find a tiny image to put in the middle!


In the April design team pack there was some knitted wire tubing, which I couldn't find a use for. I had a little play with it, and found it stretches and shapes in interesting ways. I cut an inch of the tubing, and stretched it into a circle, which you can see in the picture below, along with the knitted wire in it's original state.


I painted the circle frame (from the design team pack) with white gesso, then stamped and embossed the raised 'frame' area with copper embossing powder.


I inserted the stretched and shaped knitted wire into the frame.


Finally, I added a moulded piece from my stash - it was just the right size and colour!



The other side of the circle frame needed to be different. I painted it with the deep turquoise Crafty Notions Spraypaque.

I stamped a texture stamp onto the raised frame, and embossed with gold. I made a dragonfly moulded disc using the Sculpey Studio antique gold polymer clay and a mould I bought in the US last year (Enchanted Gallery?) and painted the dragonfly body with acrylic paint. I gave the wings a quick coat of iridescent medium, then glued the piece into the frame and gave the disc and inner part of the frame a coat of acrylic wax to protect it.



Well, that's all the items in this month's Altered Element design team pack used in a range of small projects. Roll on next month, I'm looking forward to it already!

Friendly plastic play

I've been playing with Friendly Plastic in readiness for a swap. I like using FP with silicone moulds as the resulting embellishments are very lightweight and survive the worlds postal systems incredibly well (unlike heavy embossing powder embellishments, which are often shattered by the experience!). You can also make the FP very thin, and sometimes 'partial' moulds are more interesting than complete ones.

I have a bowl of cold water by my side, lay the Friendly Plastic into my mould (foil side down) and heat it with my heat gun until it gets shiny and slumps into the mould. I dip my fingers into the cold water, then use them to push the FP into the mould, making sure it's pushed into all the nooks and crannies. Fingers don't burn if there is water between them and the Friendly Plastic, but they do burn if there isn't - so be careful!

When I have finished pushing the FP into the corners, I drop the mould and FP into the cold water and leave it there for as long as I can bear to. If it has any flat shiny bits when I unmould it, it means that particular bit of FP didn't get hot enough to melt into the mould properly, so I just repeat the process, focussing on that area of the piece.

I find the Friendly Plastic colours a little bright, so always tone down or add other colour by rubbing gently with Treasure Gold wax. Here are a selection of pieces, some made using scraps, some using just one piece of FP. Remember that you can enlarge the picture by clicking on it.


As you can see from the mermaid, you can use more than one colour in the mould - she was made using scraps of turquoise and gold. The green man at the front of the picture was made using lots of small scraps of various colours, the Treasure gold brings them all together into one piece.

I use Krafty Lady moulds, Enchanted Gallery moulds, and some I've made myself using 2 part silicone mould compound, which you can buy very reasonably at Polymer Clay Expess. I am looking at experimenting with different methods of working with Friendly Plastic, and trying to create some lovely things without ending up with a sticky grey mess (which is what many of my efforts were like before I discovered using it in moulds!).