Polymer Clay and alcohol inks

I've been playing with alcohol inks lately. Using them on cured polymer clay is addicting. They are so unpredictable and fun.

I had stamped some ovals that I wanted to use with tinted liquid clay and forgot a step so after they were cured they were useless for what I was planning, in comes the alcohol ink to the rescue. I started playing and just couldn't stop.

After I get the inks the way I wanted them and dry I plan on layering them with liquid clay to bring out the dimension of the inks and stamping. Try it, you'll love it.

Barbara McGuire's "Creative Canes" book

I just love Barbara's book, it freed me from trying so hard to do perfect Skinner blend right triangles. Just lay some slabs of clay down and do it. I had to literally put the book down, run in there, pull out the junk clay tub and play. I made two different blends and love them both. Am I going to be dangerous now. Ok back to the book......................

Rocks, Rocks, and more Rocks!

Remember the rocks I was commissioned to make for someone at work, see my July 23rd post. I got another commission, for 34 rocks this time. I had to head to the home improvement store for a big bag of pond rocks this time. I have been scrubbing, washing, painting with glue and covering the little darlings with clay for a week now. I still have 12 to go. Not to mention the fact that the saying they wanted across the top of the rock is so long that it almost doesn't fit on some of them. I had to be creative in the way I put the waterslide transfers on. I do love the inkjet waterslide paper though. It is so easy to use and you can print virtually anything out on it and transfer to clay that you want. Boy does that open up a lot of possibilities. Every day when I walk the dogs down around the back of the house I stoop down and pick out a few more rocks to bring up to the house to use.

In the mean time, its still hotter than it should be here in Hotlanta. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel so to speak, the heat wave should just about be over. I can start to see fall coming and am so glad it is finally here. I can heat the studio with the two little toaster ovens and make things in the process. Right now I'm having to plan when I use them since they really heat the room up. Create in the evenings, bake the next morning. And so it goes in the south, the dog days of summer are upon us.

Hotlanta and musings in the heat.

No photos today. Didn't get much claying done. Just too darn hot in the studio. We aren't use to these 100+ degree days down here in Hotlanta and when you add in the humidity, man. I start to think about the people that lived down here 100 years ago. How or better yet, why would anyone want to live in this heat and humidity without air.

Ten or so years ago, while living in Fresno, CA ,we had a state wide power failure in August. It was 114 outside, I had just had foot surgery so I couldn't even get in the pool, we laid on the ceramic tile entry way and just waited for the power to come back on. That night around 10pm it came back on, we were laying outside on the loungers to try and keep cool and all of a sudden we could hear air conditioners come on. We rushed in the house, stupidly expecting the house to immediately be cool. Ha, it took another three hours to cool down the house.

Luckily these days we have air conditioning or at least some place to go where there is air where we can get relief. The air conditioner put in with this house is undersized and can't keep up with anything over 95 so we have a standing room air conditioner in the den. We pretty much have to hang out in this room to keep cool and at that its still 80 in here. No energy to do anything.

I just got order for 28 more polymer clay covered rocks. See my July 23rd entry below for a photo of previous rocks. I'm planning on making these a different color combination just for fun. JanZrocks! Who knows, maybe it will be my claim to fame. I went to the local Home Depot and got two bags of pond rocks which will give me enough good size rocks for a very long time. Last time I bought the river rocks from Joann's and because they were polished they were three times as much AND only half of them were large enough. Lessons learned. Boy is that becoming my mantra in the journey down this path.

Stay cool where ever you are.........................

Weird happenings

So, I have this nice piece that I had painted three or four layers of liquid clay over the top of to create some depth, then I dipped it in Future and cured it at 200 for 15 minutes. When I was getting ready to make a necklace out of it I noticed that there were a few bubbles around the bottom edge of the front of the piece. Of course I had to pick at it a bit and the whole top peeled off. I can't imagine why or what happened. All of it is Kato clay, I painted the layers on one at a time and cured them like I have all the others. For it to peel off like that really worries me.

Extruder woes

I tried some of the smaller disks with my PCE extruder and made the mistake of putting in a smaller bead corer. I couldn't get even the thinner stretch cord through the hole. So, I had to cut the extruded clay up into beads so I could drill out the holes a bit. I was so frustrated.

I learned something else while making the extruded bracelets, I thought that you had to cut the curved extrusion in half when it came out of the oven and when I did this it was like rubber and cracked as I cut it. Later when I cut the backed cooled bracelet into pieces it cut so nicely. A bit hard to cut but such a smooth cut. So, I guess there are some things that are cut immediately after taken out of the oven but a curved piece, forget it.

AND the Kato clay that I cut looked very spongy inside. Those did plaque and moon quite a bit, obviously filled with air bubbles but really, I had to run the clay through the pasta machine so many times to mix that color that one would have thought that the clay was conditioned enough. Very strange. The second batch I mixed didn't do that and it was mixed at least that many times if not more.

I've put them both up at my Etsy shop for sale if anyone is interested.