Use Up Polymer Clay Scraps

No frills tutorial...

STEP 1

Cut out shapes, arrange on a sheet of clay. Put your sheet on a large, smooth-surfaced tile so you can easily pick up the whole thing and rotate it. The ability to move the whole thing around will come in handy in the next steps.

Run an acrylic roller over it gently to press the shapes down into the base layer. (My pieces are a little thick -- a tad thinner would make the flattening process go faster.) Don't use the pasta machine at this stage -- it will warp the design. After you have gone over it multiple times in different directions with the acrylic roller and it's almost flat, you can put it in the pasta machine to make it totally smooth if you want to. Just be sure to turn the sheet 90 degrees with each pass through the machine so your shapes don't warp.

STEP 2

 Etch lines into your shapes to define and add interest if you want. 

STEP 3

Use cutters on the sheet to make a series of pieces you can use for necklace or bracelet components. Peel away the excess clay from around your pieces. Use a small cutter to make holes or opt to drill small holes after curing. Bake right on the tile for flat pieces or gently peel the pieces off the tile with a slicer and place on a curved surface as shown below.

STEP 4

Bake according to your clay's instructions. If you etched designs into the clay, rub your favorite paint into the etched lines and wipe the excess paint off the surface. Then sand and finish as desired.

Tutorial: Chalkboard Beads

I received a request for a tutorial on these beads. 

The most critical part of this process is having the right kind of stamp. I designed the stamps because I couldn't find any like what I needed. 

The difference: the negative space of the stamp design needs to be the "solid" portion in your artwork so that it will end up as the raised part on the stamp -- the part that makes the impression. In other words, these stamps are set up in reverse of how most stamps are created. 

The stamps look like this:

The artwork that I had turned into stamps looked like this:

I like the design element to extend into the border area so each element breaks the edge of the frame. 

How to Make the Beads

1. Roll a sheet of black and impress two stamps. 
2. Cut each one out leaving an equal amount of space around the edges of the impression that is wider than the border you eventually want to have on the bead.
3. Cut a third rectangle of clay that is the same size as the two impressed pieces. 
4. Cut a strip out of that third piece to leave a channel for the stringing cord. (After cutting out the cord channel, the third piece is now actually two separate pieces of clay.)
5. Place one of the impressed pieces face down on your baking cardboard making note of the "top" edge, if that matters in your design. 
6. Lay the two channel pieces on top of the impressed piece leaving a channel where you want your stringing cord to run. 
7. Place the second impressed piece face up on the stack, making sure the "top" of this piece is aligned with the top of the face down piece. 
8. Gently pat to ensure that the layers are adhered to each other.
9. Trim all four edges of the bead to make the stack even and smooth on all sides. 
10. Your channel hole may disappear momentarily, but gently insert an awl or skewer to open the hole and channel up again.
11. Cure the bead.
12. After it is cured and cooled, sand it a little to get the roughness off the surface. 
13. If you want to make the edges of the bead smooth instead of sharp, sand all the edges and corners to give the bead a worn feel.
14. Use a tiny bit of white acrylic or oil paint to cover the surface very lightly, then wipe most of it off with a very level, light touch. My stamps have fairly shallow impressions so too much paint will overwhelm it and using a hard touch when wiping the paint will probably remove it all. 
15. After the paint dries, sand the bead again to get any remaining paint off of the high surfaces.

You can also use copper metallic clay and paint it with a mix of turquoise and white to look like copper patina. Two samples are in the photo at top.

There are some of my stamps available in my etsy shop. Just go to etsy and type in Artybecca to find it.

I get my stamps made by www.readystamps.com because I can squeeze a bunch of designs on a 7" x 9" area and then cut them apart.

There are also stamp makers on etsy who will turn your design into a stamp. I have not used them so I can't vouch for any in particular.

Photo Fishing

As I have mentioned a few times before, I love walking along downtown streets, taking pictures as I go. I might take 200-300 shots in an hour or so. Then I sit in a comfy chair and look through my shots to see what goodies I caught. My favorite subject matter is store windows -- day or night -- because you can see the inside and outside world at the same time.

I was just in Manhattan for a business trip and had several opportunities to snap photos as we walked to dinners and around the hotel on the last morning in town.

Below are some examples of how there can be hidden gems in your pictures. "Zoom in and crop" is how you can take a picture from ho-hum to hmmm!

Each set of pictures shows the original and then the cropped version I made. In some cases I also used Photoshop to boost the color or add a filter.

A random street turns into...



...a story about people and cars in close spaces

A nice pink jacket, but nothing to see here, right?...



...look at the almost abstract hiding in the lower left corner.
I used a filter but can't remember which one -- maybe Paint Daubs.

 





I liked the strong sunlight framing the couple who had been walking in front of me so I snapped a series
and liked the pose below that turned up in one of the shots.
 

 

 

Waiting for the right people to walk into the scene can make a difference.

 

 

 

I snapped a series of about six images as we crossed the street and ...

 

...found this comparison of two relationships in one of them!

 

The solid color clothing doesn't distract from outside scene reflections so you can often get nice details.

 

I cropped the top half of the photo. I boosted the saturation and used the Poster Edges filter in Photoshop.

 

another view. I used the Cutout filter in Photoshop on this one.

 

Occasionally I find my way into a photo...

 

 

Embossing Powders on Polymer Clay

Update 8/17/28:
 :(  The embossing powder on clay doesn't hold up over the long run. It gets gummy and un-shiny.  If your need for super glossy only has to last a short while, go ahead and try it.
----
A few weeks ago I bought a heat gun and then last week I saw a video on Instagram in which gold embossing powder was used on calligraphy. These two unrelated events caused two more things to happen: I thought, "Hey! I can use embossing powders because now I have a heat gun." And I headed off Michael's to get some embossing powders.

At first I just got gold and white, and a mixed sample kit of black and silver, along with two Perfect Pearls glue pens (brush and bullets points), and an adhesive applicator with a sponge top.

My initial thought about the embossing powder was, "Yay! Finally, there's a way a way to make bold, opaque metallic lines on a bead. (And, also, now I want to learn modern calligraphy!)

So the first experiments were these:

But then, two more things happened:
1. As I heated the bead while it was mounted on a skewer, I saw the similarity to flameworking.
2. Now that I knew the powders were functioning as I had hoped, I bought more powders: sparkly gold, white, black, bronze, sparkly black, silver, clear, and chunky gold.

I pulled some not-so-good beads out of my stash and used the embossing powders as faux flameworking, though I think the finished products look more like ceramics than glass.

HOW TO:
I put a cured bead on a skewer. The bead had been made on a skewer so the hole was tight enough that the bead didn't slide up and down and then I went to town...

The original bead was mostly turquoise with some gold and yellow on it. I very, very lightly coated the bead with the Perfect Pearls adhesive in a sponge top applicator. I sprinkled a tiny bit of scrap powder all over the bead and hit it with the heat gun on the lower speed.
I have a Black & Decker heat gun with two speeds. The lower speed doesn't blow the powder off if you hold it at a distance and only move closer when the powder starts to melt.

After the first layer of powder is on, you no longer need the glue. If you turn the skewer while heating the bead the surface will be warm enough to make the powder stick.

Next I sprinkled on some white. I sprinkle the powder directly from the container. Put a piece of paper below where you're working to catch any excess and put it back into the container.
Or, if that's too much trouble, dump all your powder "scraps" into one container and use it as the base for your next beads.

More gold.
Sometimes I put layers of clear between the opaque layers to give the illusion of depth.

...and chunky gold...

If you keep the heat in one spot, the powder will begin to break up (a little bit is good but don't over-do it -- the melted powder will flow if you're not careful.)

Keep the bead on the stick a while to let it cool off. But if you get impatient and you touch it while it's still warm and leave a fingerprint, no worries! Just hit it with the heat again and the fingerprint will melt right out.
If you get a few bubbles from air trapped between the layers, wait until the bead cools a little, pat the bubble with your finger, and then melt the fingerprint.

CLEAR EMBOSSING
In the example below I didn't want to cover up the pretty colors underneath so I put the adhesive on the bead and sprinkled it only with clear powder and the chunky gold bits which I had mixed together.

I made a video to show the basic process. You can't see detail but you'll get the idea.

(If you can't view it on your phone, view it on a laptop. I don't know why, but the video that was shot and edited on my phone, cannot now be viewed on my phone when I try to launch it from the blog. Go figure.)

I tested the beads to see how well the finish holds up. I threw the clear one above 

 10 times and there's not a scratch or crack on it. See the video...

Transfer, Paint, Ink Experiments

I've been experimenting with liquid clay, toner transfers (learned from Lorraine Vogel's tutorial), colored pencils, inks, and paint pens. I started working with the paint pens as a way to salvage ugly old clay pieces but this weekend I worked on made-from-scratch pieces.

I created my own designs for the transfers with shapes I had drawn and scanned then arranged in Illustrator. After that I layered, colored, sliced and diced in Photoshop.

Layer 1 -- toner transfers. My transfers came out a little patchy but it won't matter for this purpose.

Layer 2 -- I put a thin layer of liquid clay over the transfer and cured it before using oil-paint pens to draw lines. The layer of clay is critical to keeping your pens in working order. If you draw directly on the transfer layer, the slight bit of tackiness of the transfer seems to gum up the works.

The "extra fine" point Sharpie pens make the nicest lines. I also tried the relatively cheap CraftSmart brand at Michael's and a more expensive Sakura pen but the Sharpies work well and don't remain gummy after I do the final spray of PYMII. The CraftSmart pens stayed a little tacky so I don't recommend for this purpose but they could be pretty decent for other uses.

The pic of the four pieces were done with the Extra Fine point; the fish was done with the Fine Point which is actually fairly thick).

I put a thin layer of liquid clay over the ink lines once they were dry and cured the pieces.

Layer 3 -- I started shading with colored pencils but they didn't like the liquid clay surface. So I pulled out my favorite ballpoint pens, Ink Joy by PaperMate, and started shading. I shaded as though light was coming from above to give the pieces a bit of 3D effect. After coloring I put another layer of liquid clay on the surface and cured it.

I discovered the purple pen bleeds. I had to touch up the white lines on the tall skinny spike before going further. The orange pen bleeds a bit also so I touched it up too.

Layer 4 -- I glued a clutch pin back on the back of each piece. I covered the backs with a full sheet of a coordinating color that I wrapped around the edges and trimmed flush. I covered the front surface with another layer of liquid clay before curing. The last liquid faded the white somewhat so I revived it with a white pen. When the piece was dry, I gave it a spray of PYMII to protect the last white lines.

Tutorial: Super Easy Earrings to Match Your Outfit

I think we all agree that part of the fun of clay is the ability to whip up jewelry to match any outfit. Here's an easy way to make half-moon curved dangly earrings. 

Mix up an assortment of colors roughly like the colors in the garment you want to match.

Roll each color on the 3 setting (on my pasta machine, 1 is the thickest) and
tear into rough edged strips. Work with the strips on a small smooth tile so you can easily
move it around to roll it, and hold it up next to your garment as you work.

Roll the layers with the acrylic rod to flatten the them. It's important to roll along
the length of the strips and start in the center and work out to the center. Otherwise you
may just worsen gaps between the colors and not end up with a smooth surface.

I needed to muddy the colors up a bit and work some sparkle in, so I added a thin layer of metallic clay to the back and blended some more with the gold on the inside.

Fold the clay in half with the fold on the short edge of the stripes.
Run it through the pasta machine several times to blend the colors for a softer effect.
I should have used the magnet on the roller trick to keep the clay from getting too wide.
But I didn't, so instead...

...I ripped off the blue and purple from the ends and put them back into the center.
I was planning on big earrings, but not that big! I needed to make sure all the colors stayed within a 2-2.5" area.

I checked the colors against my top every so often to see how my blend looked.
I ended up liking the back side of the clay so I flipped it over.
I waited to the end of my blending to add a strip of black so it wouldn't overtake the other colors.

When I was happy with my colors, I backed the sheet with a layer of black
and rolled it lightly to make sure the layers adhered to each other.

I determined where I wanted the colors to hit inside the circle, making sure to get
a little bit of purple and green because they are prominent colors in the shirt I was matching.

I laid the circle on a curved surface to cure.
This is the bottom of a soda can that the ever-helpful Jan Montarsi gave to me.

Cut the circle in half. (I used my blade while the clay was on the curved form.)
I used the point of a bamboo skewer to create the holes. I gently poked it in and then
wiggled it in a tiny circular pattern until the hole was the size I wanted.

I cured the clay, sanded the finished pieces, and buffed them.
I made earwires out of two head pins and voila, earrings to wear out to a lunch with friends.

And here's what they look like on!