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.

Friendly Plastic course - September 2009

Friendly Plastic is fabulous stuff to use in your art. It is pretty inexpensive, very lightweight, very strong and quite flexible - and it always survives the rigours of postal system!

It can appear very very bright, brash and shimmery, but can easily be toned down if that's not the effect you're after. It can look rather like dichroic glass when made into jewellery pieces.

If you've never seen it, this is what it looks like

http://www.rarebird.ltd.uk/fpshop.html

It can be used with moulds, stamped into, 'ooozed' through punchinella or metal grids, cut with cutters, run through a die cutting machine to make shapes, and there are more advanced techniques that I ahven't tried yet. You can use it to make jewellery, card embellishments, and with textiles and to make large sculptural pieces if you're more ambitious.

Here are my blog posts about what I have done with this stuff:

http://adriennegoodenough.blogspot.com/search/label/friendly%20plastic

and here is what Liz Welch, a great tutor and Friendly Plastic expert who invented the 'ooze' and 'lace' techniques, and who has made several instructional DVDs, can do with it:

http://rarelizzie.wordpress.com/

Now, Liz and I are colluding to offer a Friendly Plastic course in the beautiful setting of Tintern Abbey, in the Wye valley:

http://www.castlewales.com/tintern.html

Tinterm Abbey inspired Wordsworth to write poetry about it, and Turner to paint it. The patterns found in the Abbey stonework will be the inspiration for the jewellry that people will make on the course. The course runs for 2 days, but Liz had kindly made each day a stand alone day, so if you came for two days, you would learn different things each day.

For more information about the course, see Liz's web page:

http://lizwelch.me.uk/

And I hope to meet some of you there - I'm going for both days!

Adrienne

New baby card

A beautiful baby girl entered the world yesterday, my 7th grandchild - Seren (pronounced as in serendipity, serenade, and which is the Welsh word for 'star'). I made a card to go with the gifts I gave her parents:


The edging is just Stewart Gill Pearlise and Metallica paint dabbed and smeared on thinly using a baby wipe, with some pearlescent cream textured card layered on top. The main embellishments is made from Stewart Gill glitterati fibres (also known as Crystalina). I used two colours and mixed them well, then fused them together with an iron on a medium heat (protect the iron with non-stick paper). I trimmed 3 sides of the fused fibres, then ran the piece through my Wizard machine in a Cuttlebug embossing folder. This creates a lovely subtle pattern in amongst all the shimmer. Finally, I used a stencil and Golden light moulding paste to create the hands.

Interactive art needs your input - updated

This has been an experiment with texture and colour. I am making a canvas as a gift for Maggi. She wanted the gift to be inspired by literature, music, or film. So many choices....

After being completely stuck, I looked at the books on my bookshelf today, and saw one by Sheri Tepper, called 'Beauty'. Inspired, I decided to try and create a piece of art which represented beauty. I took a 6 x 6 inch canvas, and stuck some torn and crumpled deli paper at the top left quarter and bottom right quarter. I added fibre gel medium at the top right quarter, then added fine and coarse garnet gels everywhere else - these are the brown dots you can see. It doesn't look very inspiring, but I'm hoping I've made great texture!



Next, I added a butterfly shaped area of fibre gel medium in the top left quarter, on top of the garnet gel and deli paper. I let it dry a little, then wet and unmounted stamp and stamped into the fibre gel.

The butterfly's not that easy to see on the picture above, but you get a better idea from the close up below.

Once everything had dried, I began to add colour. I added crimson, orange, turquoise and violet. It was too bright, even for me, so I went over the crimson and orange with transparent yellow to tone them down just a little. I put a couple of coats of cobalt turquoise on the butterfly, as I wanted it to be bolder to stand out from such a bright background. It's still way too bright, but I need it to be bold to show through the next step.


I added liming wax to the whole canvas. Liming wax is used on wood to make it look weathered and old. Here, it integrates all the colours and tone s the whole canvas down into a more subtle colour mix. I really like the effect. But, the butterfly doesn't stand out enough.


I've added Treasure Gold to the butterfly. It still didn't stand out enough, and the liming wax had integrated the colour just a tad too much. I took some turquoise pthalo and painted around the butterfly to give more contrast, and added a little at the top right and bottom right corners of the canvas to balance it a little.


I'm really pleased with this so far. It might even be finished. But I am undecided, which is where YOU come in. Do I leave it like this? Or do I add one of the embellishments below????? Please look, and leave a comment with your choice.

Do I add a butterfly stamped onto acetate, with the wings bent up so it looks as if it has just landed on the canvas?


Do I add a spirit of the forest?


Or a green man?


Or a bronze plaque inscribed with script? (this was the embellishment I had planned to use at the outset)


Or, can you think of an embellishment which would look even better on this canvas?

Please let me know which version you prefer, and why. If you have a different idea, please suggest it.

I'm looking forward to reading your thoughts.

UPDATE

Those of you who know me won't be surprised to find I did something completely different to the trial pieces above. I didn't look at the canvas for 15 hours, and I read all your comments. By the way, putting the butterfly transpaency was the first thing I did when I made it - and it looked awful LOL.

The comments which made the most impact on me were the ones about odd numbers and adding more turquoise pthalo (a girl can never have too much turquoise in her life!). And somebody mentioned size. And somebody mentioned dimension, lifting things off the canvas. When I looked at my assorted embellishments I realised that half the problem was that they were too large for the canvas.

So, I made some smaller gold butterfly themed embellishments. I tried them on the canvas and they didn't work either.


Eventually, I fished out a tiny butterfly mould, and used some air dry clay to make two small butterflies. I painted them and added Treasure Gold, and adhered them onto the canvas with heavy gel. I painted around them. I think it's FINISHED!!!!


Thank you all for your comments, ideas, and input.

Canvas for Fiona

I made a canvas for Fiona's birthday. I found a square canvas with sloping sides, and used a small palette knife to apply regular gel medium all over to add texture. I think this is the original purpose gel medium was designed for! I also used the gel to adhere and embed the main focal point of the canvas - a paper casting of a rubber stamp.

Once the gel had dried, I began adding very thin layers of fluid acrylic paint in Paynes Grey, and Turquois (pthalo) plus a little Cobalt Turquoise (that was a mistake, it's not transparent enough!). I built up and added the paint layers, then added some violet around the bottom of the sides.


I added some gold oil pastel to the high points of the texture, then added 2 more layers of paint. The gold didn't show through enough, so I touched the high points with Treasure Gold to highlight them. It was difficult to get a good image of this canvas. The image above was scanned and shows the detail well, the image below is a photograph which shows the colour much more accurately but doesn't show the detail so well!


Anyway, Happy Birthday Fiona!

Fantasy film canvas

Apologies in advance for the picture quality - this stuff isn't easy to get good pictures of! I am hosting a fantasy film swap on CC Swaps. We each made an 'item of choice' for our partner. I decided to try making a fantasy film canvas, and this is the result:


I fused several layers of the palest colour of fantasy film onmto the canvas, wrapping it arouind the edges and back, and using an iron to shrink and fuse. I took 2 more layers of the same colour and inked up a large stamp (Stamp Camp) with Stazon, then laid the fantasy film on top, covered with some paper (just to protect the iron) and fused the layers together on the sytamp. I peeled the image off the stamp, trimmed it, and decided the body of the angel needed t stand out a little more. I painted a layer of gold paint on the back, then fused it onto the canvas with the iron.

I hope my swap partner likes it!

Angelina ATC

I am making some ATCs without paper for a swap on CC Swaps. I decided to use a range of fantasy film and angelina fibre colours. I inked up a leaf and a flower stamp with black Stazon, then laid 2 layers of fantasy film/fusible film/angelina film on top, a layer of silicone paper on top of that, and ironed for a few seconds on the silk setting of my dry iron to use the layers together and heat set the image onto the film. I cut around the images and found myself the pleased owner of some very shimmery flowers and leaves.


I cut some fantasy film out, and layered 2 pieces with a thin layer of angelina fibres between them. I laid the silicone paper back on top, and ironed it all together to fuse it into one sheet. I ran the sheet through my Wizard, using the ATC die cutter. Finally, I laid my leaves and flowers onto the ATC shapes, put the silicone paper back on top, and gave another few seconds with the iron to fuse the leaves and flowers onto the ATC background.


I like the way the angelina fibres give texture to the background, while the different colours of fantasy film stand out from each other.

Fantasy canvas

Jean's theme for this Girl of the Month gift was 'fantasy'. I did think about making something using fantasy film, but decided to paint a canvas instead! This was one big learning curve of experimentation for me - and the reason it fits the fantasy theme is that I have fantasized about painting a textured rich canvas that I like!


The canvas is about 7 inches by 9.5 inches. I layered torn book pages onto the canvas, then a wash of watered down gesso, and a quick coat of Opals Dust (this gives deep down sparkle at some angles). I then added many coats of fluid acrylics and gel mediums.

I added texture to the background by stamping a texture stamp into one layer of half dry gel medium, and then added the focal points by stamping into gel medium and highlighting it with Treasure Gold (yes, I think I do use this stuff on everything I make!). The colour reminds me of the deep ocean, and the canvas has a deep rich polish. I'm really pleased with this and may make something like it for my own wall!!!

Friendly plastic art

I am taking part in a swap where I had to make something incorporating Friendly Plastic, and this is what my partner will be getting:


I used a Krafty Lady mould and lots of small pieces of Friendly Plastic left over from other projects. I put them all in the mould, heated with a heat gun, dipped my fingers in cold water and pushed the plastic into all the nooks and crannies in the mould. I didn't fill the mould - the piece is about 1/8th of an inch thick all over. Once it had cooled, I pushed it out of the mould and gave it a thorough rubbing with Treasure Gold, then set about making the background to set it off.

I took a 5 inch by 7 inch canvas, and covered it with scraps of paper form an old Welsh language book. I gave this a thin coat of Titan Buff fluid acrylic, then several very thin coats each of 3 or 4 colours of fluid acrylic - paynes grey, transparent orange and yellow and a crimson.

I took a fleur-de-lys stencil and a gold oil pastel crayon, and stencilled half motifs down each side before giving the canvas a final coat of the crimson paint. The canvas probably has about 20 coats of paint on it, and this gives a lovely rich polished sheen. I stuck the Friendly Plastic body on using extra heavy gel medium.

House chunky book

I decided I liked the covers enough not to do any more to them, so I just named my house the 'House of Fun' - because fun is what I get from making and receiving art. I punched four holes in each page and tied them to each other using a fancy white yarn, to make a concertina style book.


Here are half of the fronts of the pages:


and here are the rest:


Here are half the backs:


and here are the rest:

The book looks lovely on my art shelf. You can see the post about my own page for this book here.