I'm published!!!

My first "how to" article was just published in Easy Metal 2015, a special issue from Step by Step Wire Jewelry.  The design is a brooch made from copper sheet and polymer clay.  The paper edition should be on magazine shelves soon, but a digital version is available now from the Interweave online store.  I'm doing my happy dance.

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.

Managing Color

I had to drop out of the Thing a Day project because of going out of town and then returning to find water in my basement, but enough of that.......

I've tried various ways to keep track of color recipes and mixed clay, but I haven't had an integrated system that works consistently.  I've gotten pretty good at forcing myself to slow down and record recipes for the colors I mix on sample chips, as you can see from the photo.  The recipes are written on the back, and the loose chips make it possible to move them around, overlap them and see what colors look good together.  I've also tried gluing color chips on individual index cards, but they were hard to keep organized and took up a lot of room. My method for organizing leftover clay was to write the brand and the recipe on a piece of index card, put that with the clay, and wrap it all in plastic wrap.  That kind of works, but it means I have to write the recipe all over again, and a couple of times the card got saturated with plastisizer and the ink ran.  No idea how I made those pretty colors.  So when Carolyn Good released the tutorial for her Clay Color System,  I purchased it immediately.  She is one of the most prolific producers of quality clay products that I know of, so I figured she must have a good system.  She does.

Her clearly written and illustrated tutorial explains her system for organizing recipes and storing clay and includes cards to print out for recipes and color chips.  In addition it provides over 50 recipes including her favorite color base mixes and the Pantone Spring 2011 colors.  There are also descriptions of how she approaches blends and tries out color combinations.  I found the system to be very logical, easy to implement and better than the methods I have tried before.  (I think I will continue to make my little color squares in addition to the color chips in Carolyn's system - they take hardly any more clay or additional time; I can just write the "code" on the back instead of the recipe; and I do like to dump them on the table and play with them.)  From now on I will have no excuse for finding packages of mystery colors in my clay drawer or wondering how the heck I made that great color.

For anyone who mixes a lot of custom colors and stores the clay or wants to be able to repeat the recipe, I highly recommend this tutorial and system.  You can find it by following these links to Artfire  or Etsy.

Cane Slicing

I'm pretty good at "eye-balling" measurements, but I wanted to be even more exact for slicing canes.  Anything to lessen sanding requirements, right?  I've tried different cane slicers, but none have given me the precision and uniformity I desire.  The Precise-a-Slice from ValKat Designs worked the best for me, but I was still having problems.  The stiffer blades are thicker and had a tendency to mash down the cane and make marks on the slices, while tissue blades are so flexible, I kept getting curved slices of varying thickness.   My hands couldn't hold the tissue blade rigidly enough.  Then this morning I had a brain storm - my jewelry saw might hold the blade!  Sure enough, it did, and it worked especially well when I cut the blade to the shortest length possible.  For paper thin slices of canes with translucent sections, I'll probably still hold the cane and blade in my hands, but so far, this method is working very well.  (The Precise-a-Slice is available at Polymer Clay Express.  Scroll down the equipment page to find it.)

Here's how I did it.  I used tin shears to cut a tissue blade to a length of 3 1/4 inches.  It was very easy to cut, but be sure to wear eye protection!  Then I put the blade in my adjustable jewelry saw, making it as taut as possible.  Again, be careful doing this because the cutting edge of the blade will be up while you are pushing against the saw to tighten it.

I centered the cane in the Precise-a-Slice and stabilized it with some Super Sculpey (putting some on top of the cane, at the back, keeps it from rising when you slice), and then I sliced by holding the saw so that the blade was against the guides and angled slightly.  So far, I've had good luck slicing at the thinnest increments marked on the device.

More on BOH stoppers

I received a nice note from Louise who linked me to her blog where she shows another method of improving Bottle of Hope stoppers. Scroll way down to see her method.

I forgot to say "Thanks" to Georgia (aka iggy) for her suggestion about the tiny rubber bands.