Glittery book

I made this book for a swap with the theme of 'glitter'.  I wanted to use glitter in a subtle way, rather than in an 'in-your-face' way.

I created the book by tearing 5 sheets of watercolour paper for the inside, and a slightly larger sheet for the cover. I painted the cover with a mixture of matte medium, turquoise, jenkins green and titan buff fluid acrylic paints and dabbed a crumpled piece of paper on it to add texture.

Once the paint was dry, I used a Basic Grey laser cut 'doily' as a stencil, and dabbed on Stewart Gill Metamica paints in 'brass' and 'verdigris'.  Once dry, I added glitter  by dabbing on 3 colours of Stickles, and spreading it around with my finger. It doesn't show that well on this photo, but you can see more of it on the second photo.

To finish the book off, I did a very simple binding using some tubular variegated embroidery thread, and a polymer clay. The pear was made by rolling Premo Accents clay until thin, creating texture using a rubber stamp, and baking until cured. This is the first time I've used Premo Accents and I was very disappointed because the gold isn't shiny, it's very matte.  And I needed shiny. Very shiny. So, after a generous application of Treasure Gold, my pear is beautifully shiny!

Small paper pournal

This was another project from my few arty days in Shropshire, this class was taught by Wendy and Annie.

We made a small blank journal, about 5 inches wide by 6 inches tall.

We used Brusho washes to colour paper (lining wallpaper), then once it was dry, we sprayed Brusho washes with added mica through stencils to decorate the pages.

For the covers, which were inspired by a Linda Monk class Wendy had taken,  we used scrim painted with gesso and paint, to create texture.  I coloured the scrim with fluid acrylic paint and added glitz with Treasure Gold, before sewing some beads on and adding a butterfly. 

The butterfly is made from polymer clay, stamped into and cut out using a cutter, then painted with acrylic paint after baking. 

Button tags

I made these tags for a handmade button on a tag swap. The buttons are made from polymer clay.

I mounted the orange buttons onto paper flower shapes which I'd overstamped with some text.  The tag background was made by smearing distress inks onto a craft sheet, spritzing, and dipping the tag into the ink. Do this several times, drying the tag in between.  I then used a Crafters Workshop stencil, and moulding paste, to add patterned texture.  I ran an inkpad over the top to catch the detail, then added a bunch of fibres.

The tag below was made the same way.

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!

ATCs

Here are a few of the ATCs I've made recently. I love the small scale of ATCs as a 'canvas' to try out new ideas, techniques, and products, before using them in bigger projects where mistakes would be more costly in terms of time and materials.

The pear on this ATC is made from polymer clay, painted with acrylic paints and stamped onto. It's set onto textured card, which I painted with fluid acrylics then rubbed with metallic rub on wax to bring out the texture.


This ATC was a way of testing out Brilliance white ink on colourwash & distress ink backgrounds. I used watercolour paper which had been sprayed with several colourwash sprays, then stamped the main image using black Stazon. I used a mask to cover the centre of the image, and added distress inks around the edges using cut and stamp foam. Finally, I stamped using Brilliance Moonlight White.


This was another new technique try out. I created 'luminous paste' by mixing PearlEx with glossy soft gel medium (one of the variations in Julia Andrus's Paper Transformed book), and applied it to painted canvas through a stencil. The letters are die cut. The butterfly is polymer clay - using clay which was rolled out, had a layer of metal leaf added, coloured with alcohol ink, then rolled out thinly so that the metal leaf 'cracks'. I had leftovers from my mian project so put them into the small buttefly mould to see how they looked. Works for me! I'm not sure I like my design here, but it is a little record of the techniques I used, which will act as a reminder for me.

Conditioning Polymer Clay

This is a first - a blog post without pictures! I have been playing with polymer clay, but not nearly as much as I'd like to, and I haven't finished anything off to a standard that I'm happy to show off yet!

The problem with polymer clay is that you have to condition it before you can play with it. Clay is properly conditioned when you can fold a thin sheet in half and have no cracking at the fold.

Different brands of polymer clay have different properties, and as I have learnt this week, until you understand what they are, you won't necessarily be successful in preparing the clay for play.

I worked with Fimo Classic last summer, and found it a bit of a pain to condition, even using a pasta machine, so a friend suggested I try Fimo Soft. Fimo Soft is easier to condition, but I don't like the look or feel of the baked clay as much as baked Classic.

I worked with Sculpey's new lightweight Polymer Clay - it is a dream to condition as it is very soft and easy to knead. It also takes colour very well after baking - using alcohol inks and Johnson's Klear/Future acrylic floor polish. If I had found this first, I probably wouldn't have tried any other polymer clays! Except that I like to use black clay, and I haven't seen this product in any colour other than white - it may exist, but I haven't seen it.

I had read that Kato Clay is harder to condition, but worth the extra effort in terms of the finished product. I have tried it this week, and would agree completely that the finished product is the best I've tried, but the conditioning nearly defeated me.

I asked around for suggestions about conditioning polymer clay. Friends suggested that I place the pack of clay in my underwear or that I sit on the package for a while to warm it up before trying to condition it in a pasta machine. I have discovered that this works well - but only for some clays.

Fimo clay is conditioned by the use of gentle warmth and kneading, or running the slightly warmed clay through a pasta machine. So the underwear or sitting on it technique works well.

Kato Clay is conditioned by pressure, so warmth doesn't help at all. And even in thin slices, running it through my pasta machine just resulted in a load of crumbs which I couldn't get to stick together enough to run through the machine again, and which were too hard to knead. I spent an evening trying to get crumbs through the machine in enough quantity to stick together. It was really hard to get through the machine, and I had to run it through between 35 and 4o times to get it manageable, but it still wasn't properly conditioned. I gave up and left it alone for a couple of days.

And then I had a brainwave. I remembered reading that you can use your Wizard to condition polymer clay, so ran some clay through it, between plastic bags. The clay got softer, but the bags stretched and popped. I ran some more through between pieces of teflon craft sheet. The clay got softer, but I managed to split the craft sheet! After running the clay through the Wizard about 10 times it seemed much softer, but also seemed to be getting 'dry', so I moved it to the pasta machine and ran it through a few times. It was really easy to run through the pasta machine, and working it between metal seemed to make it less dry and more plastic and elastic.

So, I now have my perfect method for conditioning KatoClay - run small amounts through the Wizard ten times, then through the pasta machine 10 times. Combine the resulting small sheets into bigger sheets, until all the clay you want to work with is in one sheet, and can be folded without any cracking at the fold. This method is much easier than the pasta machine alone, and certainly much much quicker.

I need to experiment with what I use to protect the Wizard plates whilst running the polyclay through the Wizard - polythene is too stretchy, teflon craft sheet is not stretchy enough, and probably too thin. Ideally, 2 thin metal plates would be best, but until I can think of how to create those (cutting up the Christmas 'Quality Street' tins?), I will try using the thin plastic used for slot-together files & boxes, or acetate from Christmas Card packaging, or transparencies. I'll edit this post and let you know what works best when I have tried a few things out!

Polymer clay brocade jewellery

Just a couple more simple pieces of jewellery that I made form my polymer clay brocade sheet and some silver findings. These are on their way to Debra & Pattie. I hope they like them.

Polymer clay 'brocade'

I was reading Donna Kato's 2nd book on Polymer Clay (Surface Effects for Polymer Clay), which I can highly recommend as having great eye candy and clear instructions, when I came across 'polymer clay brocade' and fell in love.

I've really enjoyed making these pieces, and thought I'd share how I did them.

First, gather your supplies - you'll need:

a ceramic tile or piece of silicone coated baking paper to work on
a pasta machine or Wizard die cutting machine if you have one (but you can knead the clay by hand if you don't)
black polymer clay - preferably Kato or Fimo
metallic acrylic paint, plus 3 colours of acrylic paint
rubber stamps - deeply etched with all over texture or pattern rather than images (you could also use texture plates, or perhaps even an opened out Cuttlebug folder)
cornstarch, talc or similar for dusting
rolling pin - preferably acrylic or brass rod or acrylic brayer but I managed with a glass bottle!
metal cookie or similar cutters if you have them

The very basic instructions for the technique are really very simple, as follows:

Condition clay and roll into sheets. Paint clay, and impress with a stamp. paint clay again, and roll flat. Cut into shapes and bake as per manufacturer's instructions. Simple!!!

You'll be pleased to know there are step photos below, with added hints and tips and leaning points from the mistakes I made when I made mine!!!

Gathering the supplies

I chose to make 3 different pieces of 'brocade' - one with a silver base, one gold, one copper. I thought it would be a good way of using up some cheap copper and silver metallic paint I had. This was a BIG mistake. As you will see, this technique works MUCH better using good quality paint, like the Lumieres or Golden products. Here are the paints I started off with:



Next, I chose my acrylic colours for the copper based piece:

and for the silver based piece:

and for the gold based piece:


All the coloured acrylic paints shown above performed very well for this technique.

Next I chose my rubber stamps, these need to be all over textures or patterns, and one large stamp is easier to use than stamping more than once with a smaller one. The effect is better with deeply cut stamps, rather than shallow ones. The stamps I chose are (from left to right) from Innovative Stamp Creations, Stamp Camp, and Polymer Clay Express. The one on the right worked best of all - it was big, deeply cut, and designed for using with polymer clay.


A rolling pin. Preferably an acrylic one or a brass rod, but I didn't have either. I used this tall thin glass bottle, as I had read somewhere that you can work on clay tiles or sheets of glass and the clay doesn't stick to them. The clay stuck to it. So I used a layer of silicone coated baking paper between the clay and the bottle and it worked absolutely FINE. A wooden rolling pin and a sheet of silicone coated baking parchment would work, too. As would a thick metal knitting needle.


Something to dust your stamps with. You could grab a square of muslin and put some cornflour (cornstarch) in it and hold it together with an elastic band, or perhaps try using talc, or you could take the easy option and use one of these if you have one:


Polymer clay. I used Fimo soft clay. I want to try Kato clay, and have ordered some from the US, but I couldn't wait for it to arrive to try this technique so used what I had. I made about 30 embellishments out of one small pack, which cost less than £2.

Instructions

Condition the clay by running it though a pasta machine a few times, folding the sheets into smaller packages before running them through the machine again. You can also use the Wizard (and maybe even other die cutting machines) for this bit, just sandwich the clay between two pieces of silicone coated baking paper, run it through, and fold up the sheets of clay before running though again. If you don't have a pasta machine or Wizard, you can condition the clay by hand by kneading it until it feels smooth and soft. This will take you between 5 and 15 minutes, depending on how much effort you put in and how hot your hands are!

Once the clay is conditioned, you need to roll it into sheets. If you use a pasta machine to do this, use the thickest setting. If you roll by hand, use something either side of your clay to ensure an even thickness - you could use double thickness of chip board, for instance. They are somewhere between 1/8th and 3/16th of an inch thick. The thickness is not critical, if your finished 'brocade' is too thin, you can layer it onto another thin sheet of plain clay. I got 3 sheets from my small packet, here are the two smaller ones, the tiles they are on are 6 inches square. I was a little concerned at the obvious ridges, but they didn't show at all in the finished 'brocade', so you don't need to be too picky about pasta machine or rolling pin marks.

Now, dab a very thin layer of metallic paint all over the clay, using your fingertips. Less is definitely more, you will build up 4 or maybe even 5 thin layers. As I found out, if you put the paint on too thick, it will come off when you add the next layer. So, this is what it looks like after 1 layer, I tried using my finger to apply the paint on the left, and a sponge brush for the piece on the right:

Allow 10 minutes for the paint to dry between layers. This next pic is after the second layer, and this is where I began to notice the difference between the cheap paint on the right and the better quality Lumiere paint on the left:


The cheap paint was looking distinctly thin and patchy, but I added a third layer, and found that the cheap paint was coming off as fast as it was going on. The better quality paints have better binders and more pigment, working on polymer clay needs a good binder and lots of pigment.

I tried using my fingers instead of the sponge brush but it got worse, so I decided to change paint, for this high quality one by Golden (but I think any good quality, highly pigmented paint would work just as well).

Just look at the difference, after the 4th coat:


Because I'd used the cheap paint and got poor coverage, I added a fifth coat of the copper. if I'd used good paint form the outset, I think 4 coats would be enough.



The next step is to THOROUGHLY dust your stamp, then lay it on top of the clay (patterned side facing downwards) and take you rolling pin and roll it ONCE, pressing down hard. This is where you find out if you dusted well enough. If you didn't, you'll be picking bits off clay off your stamp for a while, believe me. This is what my gold sheet looked like after impressing the stamp into it:


And this is what the copper one looked like. I used a smaller stamp, and impressed twice. You can see the join line at this point, but not in the finished 'brocade'.

I completely forgot to dust the stamp in between impressing it into the clay. After the second impression, it was hard to get the stamp off the clay, and the sheet broke into small pieces while I was trying. And this last small piece was not the easiest thing to get off the stamp. I picked it all of bit by bit and scrubbed the stamp with warm soapy water and it is fine, but I learnt how important dusting the stamps is!


After impressing the clay, you add colour, again with you fingertips. Here's what the copper colour looked like after adding my paints:


After the paint dries (about 10 minutes) you roll the piece flat, here's what the gold sheet looked like after painting and rolling flat:


Finally, make embellishments from your sheets of 'biocade'. Here are a selection of the embellishments I made from the gold and copper sheets:




Here are pictures of my third sheet, using the same process. This sheet is about 3.5 inches wide and 7-8 inches long. I began this sheet with cheap paint and switched to better paint mid way:


Top half has a third coat of the Golden paint, the bottom half has a third coat of the cheap stuff:




After stamping:


After adding 3 acrylic colours with my fingertips:


After rolling to create a flat surface:


And here are some embellishments I made from the finished 'brocade' - I poked holes into these with an awl before baking, so that they can be made into pendants and earrings:


There will always be left over polymer clay when you do something like this. I rolled all my scraps up and ran them though the pasta machine a few times. All the acrylic paimnt got absorbed by the clay, and I used the scraps to make some moulded embellishments.



If you brush your moulds with PearlEx before putting the clay in, then bake in the mould, this is the sort of thing you get:


This was made in a home made mould, taken from a milagro ornament I bought in an art gallery shop in 2007. I brushed the mould with 3 colours of PearlEx before pushing the polymer clay into the mould, and baking it.