Crushed Velvet Technique

I've been playing with a polymer clay technique called Crushed Velvet.  It is a mica shift technique where you run the metallic clay through the pasta machine a bunch of times to line up all the mica particles, then you put the sheet of clay through the fettuccini cutter which slices it into little tiny strips.  Then you mush up the strips into a cane. You take a slice of the cane and turn it into a veneer and then make what you want.  You get a 3D effect even though you used only one color of clay.  I made some earrings and a couple of cabochons.  Fun and pretty.

Mokume gane pendants and earrings

I'm preparing for some shows this fall and these pendants and earrings are some of my new works. They are in the Julie Picarello style of mokume gane technique.  For those who don't know, you make a stack of different colors of polymer clay and poke holes in it.  Then you take shavings from the stack and use them to make your objects.  It's a fun technique because you never know quite what you will get.

Faux Knits in the Missoni style

My friend Carolyn Good, who is about the most creative and prolific clayer I know, and I have both been working with faux knits in the Missoni style.  We got the technique from Judy Belcher's excellent tutorial on CraftArtEdu.  I've been making pendants and bracelets, and they have been quite popular at the knitting shows I've done over the last year.

 

 However, when I saw Carolyn's adorable faux
knit sock pins, I was inspired to make a little sweater pin. 

 

 You can see Carolyn's work on Artfire, Etsy and on her blog.

A showcase of shawl pins

I've been making shawl pins using every technique I can think of.  Here are some examples:

This is a "Bend it Yourself" safety pin with silver zinc beads, silver-plated wire swirls and red glass beads.

This pin was made from black, white and gray layers of clay, imprinted with different texture sheets, and then the high spots shaved off.  Sanded and buffed so it is completely smooth.

Imprint mokume gane using Dan Cormier's wide peeler,

Mica shift with gold clay.  Imprinted with Helen Breil's texture sheet and then high spots shaved off.  Sanded and buffed so it is completely smooth.  It really looks 3-dimensional in real life.

From the cane I made in Carol Simmon's Kaleidoscope Cane class.

Design made in raw clay using various implements.  Antiqued after baking.

Imprinted with Helen Breil's texture sheet and then highlighted with Perfect Pearls while raw.  Wondering if I need to seal it.

Made using Wendy Orlowski's Feather Boa texture sheet.

Lots of Earrings

I haven't been blogging much, but I've been very busy with a lot of different projects including making a lot of earrings.  Every 18 months, I rendezvous with 11 fabulous women all of whom were in my freshman dorm in college.  We always have a blast and usually exchange small, inexpensive gifts, so this time I'm giving everyone earrings.  They will get to choose from the ones shown in the photos.  These are all post earrings, but I hope to make some dangles this week.



I made these using a crackle technique: pearlescent paint on clay which is run through the pasta machine when dry.  Although they look large in the photos, the trapezoidal earrings are about the size of a U.S. nickel.  The small round ones are less than 1/2 inch in diameter (12.4mm).

Progress with electroforming

Finally, I got something I like, although it is still just an experiment.  This pendant is an image transfer on a thin piece of white Premo clay.  I sealed the transfer and after it dried,  I painted on the conductive paint.   Next I glued on the quickly-done, home-made bail and put more conductive paint around the base.   I thought that the bail would also get covered in new copper so it would blend seamlessly into the "frame" but for some reason it didn't.  In addition, I was  hoping the copper would build up enough around the bail to give it a secure hold.  The bail seems to be tightly attached to the frame, but because the clay is so thin, when I pushed the bail back and forth to test the strength of the bond, it started to pull the frame away from the clay.  When I do this for real, I will make the clay thicker, the frame wider, and I'll figure out a better bail.  (I added a bail because it is difficult to suspend an object in the bath when there is no hole in it.)

Anyway, I really like that I could use an image transfer without getting any discoloration caused by the blue plating solution.  Although I got very little discoloration on the white back of the piece, sealing the image is a must.   Now to go experiment with Liver of Sulfur, something I have never used before.

A word of caution when electroforming.  The blue solution is a kind of acid.  Even though I was being careful,  one of the wires caught on something as I was removing it from the piece and it flipped a tiny little splash of the solution uncomfortably close to my eye.  Since it seems to be a mild acid, it didn't burn my skin, but I imagine it could do nasty things to an eye.  So, WEAR A SPLASH PROOF EYECOVERING.  Mine was sitting right there on the table.....

Workshop with Dan Cormier

This weekend the Southern Ontario Polymer Clay Guild hosted Dan Cormier teaching his Relief Beyond Belief workshop.  Die forming is a technique Dan adapted from metal work and he says "It's the easiest and most addictive system I know to make contoured and voluminous forms from flat sheets of polymer clay, and it remains my favourite way to create beads, buttons, brooches, and other three-dimensional objects in a range of shapes and sizes."

As part of the workshop, we received a special collection of dies to use in class and to take home for future projects.  Dan has a number of different die sets available with each one featuring a particular shape in nine graduated sizes.  The die sets don't seem to be on his website yet, but I imagine they will be soon.

This was a "process" class so we focused on techniques rather than creating a finished project.   You'll have to stay tuned to see what I make using die forming.  In the meantime, you can go to Dan's site to see his extraordinary work using this process.

Some examples from Dan's website: