Ghost Imaging

Today I played with mica clay and tried to do Grant Diffendaffer's technique for ghost imaging. I had just finished watching his two part DVD and loved every minute of it. If you haven't seen it go get it. I got it at Polymer Clay Express, its over three hours of mica clay play and watching Grant play with ten pounds of gold mica clay is too much. I couldn't wait to try it. It looked so easy. Ha, not even. The first problem was my cutting blades. Even a brand new tissue blade cause there to be scratches on the face of the clay. I can only hope that they will sand out. We shall see. For now, here is my first attempt at "Ghost Imaging". What's important to remember here is that the image is in the clay. What you see if a flat, nearly smooth piece of clay.

Kaleidoscope take 2

I had to get up and try Carolyn's kaleidoscope technique again. And it worked. Now, an important point to remember that Carolyn made is this, make sure that ALL of your clay is the same brand or like brands. These were canes that I had made from leftover Sculpy III and Fimo soft with a little Kato thrown in for good measure. BIG MISTAKE! All goes well until you start to reduce the cane. The the soft stuff squeezes out everywhere. Luckily I took it slow and got lucky. I love the results. Like Carolyn says "You are the boss of your clay"!

I even made some Natasha beads with the remaining clay. Didn't want any of this stuff to get mixed in with anything else. I think I have finally gotten rid of all of the soft clay. Whew! The stuff just isn't made for caning. Well, not by me anyway. My hands are way too warm and it just gets to the feel of butter. I have heard tell that there are those that could cane butter but I'm not one of them. I took some Sculpy III and leached it out for two days and it was still so soft that when mixed with Kato I could feel the difference. Too bad too because it was a really pretty color.

My first guild meeting

I finally got to go to my first guild meeting here in Atlanta, GA. What a fun group of women, so friend and sharing. Carolyn showed us her technique for makeing kaleidoscope canes and the results were stunning. I can't wait to use mine. Carolyn makes and sells the most beautiful canes she even had a tutorial on her site for how to make kaleidoscope canes. She brought some for all of use to see and I came home with a whole collection to play with. Thanks Carolyn, I could never make them like yours.

If there is a local guild in your area be sure and make time to go, it's really true what they say about PC artists they are so wiling to share everything they know with you.

My first flower cane, now I can say "been there done that"

I found at wonderful flower tutorial done by Cindy that I thought I could manage. So today bright and early I started it. Amazingly it only took three hours start to finish. I had the laptop in there with me each step of the way. I now have enough of this cane to last for the rest of my life. I now know why folks sell canes on E-bay, ya can't take it with you! The smaller canes are the size of a dime and the larger ones are the size of a quarter. Not a great photo but I wanted you to see the container I have them in. I found it at Walmart this morning for $2.88, it is

5 1/2" tall and will hold canes at least that tall. I was in the sporting goods department looking for an ammo case and they pointed me to these as they didn't carry ammo cases. I think these are better because you can see through them. And check out those cutouts in the two dividers. I figured I could use them as a holding area for beads when I have some baking on the bead rack.

Glorious color trip

Just played with bright colors today. I love the big twisted beads. I call them "bongo beads". And the Kato clay, it's wonderful. Comes out of the oven with a wonderful shine to it with no sanding necessary. I do see some things that need a bit of sanding. This makes me realized that if I can learn to do a better job prebake I would not even need to sand and polish Kato clay beads. They just come out so great. But, that brings up another issue. They are hard to sand, it takes a very low grit sandpaper to sand them. Best to not make mistakes prior to baking. Guess that's the lesson learned today. (I think I already knew that, just forgot.)

Cormier revisited

Wow! Dan was right, when these veneers were sanded and polished they really did look great. Just had to share them with you. Can't wait to use them for something.

I also discovered that by using the Kato clay the veneers needed very little sanding.

Black and White colorless trip

I tried a fractured cane out of Judy Belcher's book "Polymer Clay - Creative Traditions" today. All black and white clay. I tend to be drawn to the all black and white beads and wanted a new cane to use on them. This was fun to make, you have to create numerous black and white canes that are then cut and mashed (southern technical term I just learned) together to make he right triangle. The cane uses a right angle triangles, which is always hard for me. I had my husband make me a wooden frame to put the cane it to ensure the correct angle. It worked! I want to use these for pendants and bracelet tiles. Just waiting for the extruder disc to show up and I am in business. (I ordered the one that creates bracelet tiles with two holes in the center.) When I was putting the new cane away I realized that I have way too many canes so this weekend I am going to get a bunch of them out and mash them together...LOL

The Road to a Happy Accident

Today I decided to make the "Lightening Cane", from the Caning Corner in the Summer 05 issue of PolymerCafe', by McCartney Lade. Not sure what I did wrong mine didn't look remotely like the one in the magazine. Either I'm dyslexic or there is something wrong with the photos in the magazine. There is no way you can get from Step 5 to Step 6. So anyway, I ended up with this huge cane that I really didn't like. So, what to do, well, you reduce it and cut it about five times and put it back together. I ended up loving it. The happy accident. Below is a veneer made from the results and the cane . I can't wait to make some bracelets with this veneer on them and maybe some beads. They will be beautiful.

The Cutting Edge journey

Today I used Dan Cormier's "Cutting Edge" slicer. I used his tutorial from the Winter 05/06 issue of Polymer Cafe'. What fun, my first attempt (the one with the red clay at the top and bottom) just didn't turn out so well. Dan uses the straight horizontal and vertical cuts as the first design to try in the article, but I found it to be the hardest to do. Making those straight perfect cuts was almost impossible. You are told to use the dull side of the tissue blade and that was trying at best. It realigns the mica particles which creates the uniqueness of this process but cutting down through six slabs of Kato clay run through the pasta Machine on #1 was thought. The results are worth it but that didn't make it any easier.

In the photo with all the different sets is one slice, in the upper right corner, of the first attempt and then three other sets I tried. After the second slice on the first attempt I knew I didn't like it. I much prefer the curved slices, I used a round egg ring to make the cuts (it had never been used for it's original purpose so I figured we would never miss it). If you look closely you can see that I turned one piece of each set over to show the other side. (it's the slice on the right of each set). Both sides of each slice look completely different due to the direction the mica has been shifted. One side actually looks raised and the other indented. It's hard to see here, guess you just have to trust me or try it yourself. I got the slicer from Polymer Clay Express, it comes in a kit with everything you need to try making the slices. The only other thing you need is the article.

The color is wonderful. It's one 3oz package of Kato silver and 1oz of blue. I want to try it with green and purple as the second colors. I bet they would be beautiful too. I baked one slice of each slab and will sand and buff them tonight. According to the article they really look great after they have been sanded and buffed. One of the great things about this process is that if you don't like the results of your first couple of slices you can just roll it all back up and try it again. Nothing lost but a bit of time. The next step is to decide what to do with the slices. A veneer for some beads or maybe a pendant. I still have two of the slabs, I only took four slices off of each and decided to save the rest until I decide what I want to do with them. For now I will dream, I get my best ideas at night in the dark.

Mega-sil molds

I played with the Mega-sil silicone molding compound today. What fun, I made mostly molds of buttons. Here are the results. These are piece of clay that I pushed into the molds. The flat piece was just a piece of clay that I created texture with by using the same buttons. I baked them first and then put pearlex powders on them, then painted them with Future. What I discovered was that I should have put the powder on before I baked them. The Future washed a lot of the powder off. Lessons learned.

Tomato beads

Yep, that's what we called them. Ordered by my friend Deb. Tomato colored beads with some black and white graphics for interest. The shine is from using Future floor acrylic finish. Two coats and then a quick bake for 20 minutes at 250. Really adds a nice finish.

More on the Color Scale journey

Here are the rest of the Kato Color Scales. I had to order some orange, green, magenta and turquoise before I could continue. I haven't done the turquoise yet and I don't think I will even bother with the purple as it will most likely only give me a large selection of the peuce family and I would rarely do those. Here I did the yellow to orange, orange to red, blue to green and green to yellow. I love the lime greens in there. Notice that in the original red to yellow the same peaches are there and in the blue to yellow the same lime greens are there. So what we learned is that we can either use a yellow and green mix to get a really bright lime green or a yellow and blue to get a more muted lime green. Interesting, the possibilities are endless. I will most likely do the turquoise to magenta and turquoise to green as opposed to turquoise to blue which would not yeald many steps. Another thing I learned was that there are always more steps between the weaker colors to the middle than the stronger of the two to the middle. Have to remember that when I try to actually mix two colors.