Change to the remaining 2012 Workshop Schedule

To accommodate some other projects I am currently working on, I have made some slight adjustments to the dates for the remaining schedule of polymer clay workshops for this year. I have also changed the scope slightly, to cater for a wider range of interests. Please see the ‘WORKSHOPS’ tab at the top of this page for the latest information.

First experiment with foil on polymer clay

Lisa Pavelka 'Oil Slick' foil

Not sure if it is the foil or the liquid clay coating that

has cracked, as I baked the clay disc on a curve, but I

quite like the effect

I used the scraps to make some mosaic tiles - I like the

fractured effect, which would look even better under a

coat of resin

'Coffee Time' - complete

I have finially completed and photographed this mosaic that I started at the beginning of the year. 'Coffee Time' uses a range of tile sizes and has been grouted with three different colours: in addition to the main grout colour of white, I have used a dark grey for the spoon and dark brown for the surface of the coffee.

Must be time for a coffee now!



CLIPT - Fashion Clips

Today I have purchased the domain name www.clipt.co.nz for my next unique fashion accessory. It is still at the design and trial stage at the moment and it will take a while to get this website up and running.

If you want to be notified when the CLIPT multi-purpose fashion clip is launched (hopefully towards the end of this year), leave a comment and you will be the first to know.

Spring Relief

Spring Relief

This is my latest little relief artwork, made with black polymer clay, a texture plate and Pearl-Ex powders. It has been baked on a 4" x 4" block canvas.

More experiments with mould making materials

Earlier in the year I started experimenting with different mould making materials, see post

http://clairefairweather.blogspot.co.nz/2012/02/experimenting-with-different-mould.html

Here are the results of some more experiements, using the same angular mosaic form that I used in the previous ones.

Left: The cream coloured mould was made with Sculpey Mold Maker. I thought this would be better because it was not going to set in about 5 minutes - I could just bake it when I was happy with it. It was so soft and sticky it was impossible to roll very thinly (for creating a texture plate) and too sticky to go through the pasta machine. It also distorted a lot due to the softness of it.

Centre: I then tried mixing 50% Sculpey Mold Maker with 50% Sculpey Premo, thinking that this might stiffen it up a bit. I did manage to roll this a bit thinner but it still distorted quite a bit and again was quite soft to use. When baked it was slightly less rubbery than the pure Mold Maker.

Right: This mould was made with pure Sculpey Premo, which was firmer and but it was hard to press all the way into the thin joints - you can see the relief is less marked - and no good for making a mould to stamp mosaic imprints.

Out of all the materials I have tried, the Gedeo Siligum gave the best results but would be difficult to used for making sizeable moulds of this nature due to its quick setting time.

New look pasta machine handle

After much use, the grip on the handle of my pasta machine was in a bad way. (A good tip to prevent it from falling out, when in use, is to wrap a piece of masking tape once around the end before inserting it). So I decided to repair it with polymer clay.

I used scrap polymer clay to fill the gaps and provide a base layer and baked it for half an hour 

When the final layer had been added and smoothed, I baked it for another hour, just to be sure.

Six different methods for making polymer clay mosaics

At last I have photographed the samples I have made, showing six different methods for creating polymer clay mosaics. I will explain these quite different methods in my Polymer Clay Mosaic workshops.

Compact studio - now complete

I showed this photo at the beginning of the year, when I
started to convert a large bookcase into a 'compact studio'

Here is the finished look with roller blind attached to the front -
it can be rolled down at the end of the day, to hide all the clutter

Polymer clay - two years on

It is now two years since I started working with polymer clay. My study has been very intensive and when I look back to when I first started, I can see how much I have learnt, although there is still much more (you can never stop learning). I definitely feel confident enough to be able to offer advice and guidance to those trying polymer clay for the first time.

The reason I have not posted much so far this year is because I have been busy preparing material for my Polymer Clay Workshops.