Scrap Clay Project

You can keep your polymer clays in good shape for a long time by storing them in plastic airtight boxes. You have probably discovered this by far since the scrap pieces of clay tend to build up really fast. It was about time for me to make use of some of them. In this project, I covered a paper maché box.

First mix all the little pieces of different colors by stretching and twisting them together.

After dividing the mix to equal pieces, apply the same procedure until you are happy with the color distribution.

Just a warning; too much mixing generally results in dull colors. 

Slice the cane and roll the slices. To achieve a mosaic look, cut irregular sized triangles out of the rolled clay sheets and cover the sides of the box with those, applying slight pressure with a hand roller. I used a single color clay sheet for the top of the lid. After baking for about 10 minutes, wait for the box to cool down and paint the sides with white acrylic. Try to fill in the gaps between the triangles with the paint and clean the rest immediately. After this step, bake the box for another 10 minutes.

Liquid Polymer Clay

This year’s first polymer clay study is a glass candle holder stained with liquid clay. Liquid clay has a large application area. Most frequent are transfers to paper, polymer clay or fabric. But I enjoy glass staining the most.

First of all, if you wish to color the liquid clay as I did, you need to use oil paints. Paint to liquid clay ratio depends on how translucent you want the final staining to be. Use relatively more liquid clay if you want more translucency.

I used the clay gun to extrude thin black strings of polymer clay which is used for outlining the patterns on the glass. There will be some distortion in the string shape as you apply pressure to stick it to the glass but don’t worry, it won’t look bad after all. So, even if you don’t have a clay gun, hand made strings are going to be just as good.

Using the liquid clay and the paint mix, I stained the spots inside the outlines using a thin brush. After that, I baked the candle holder for 30 minutes in 265 F (~130 C). After baking, it will look a bit dull. Just apply some standard polymer clay varnish to fix it.

Polymer Experiences

While covering this switch plate with the gradient flower cane, I have discovered that the two weeks of resting conditioned the cane just perfect for covering. It was just hard enough to keep its shape during slicing and covering but still soft enough to work with.
Here is a few tips for cane work:

Use hard clays. You will have less distortion of the pattern and color mixing will be less.
If you have soft clays, try to keep them in freezer for a few minutes before slicing.

Use a sharp razor for slicing. If you observe distortion during slicing, put the clay back in the freezer a little more.

Due to lack of time, instead of wrapping the cane in foil and storing, I had left it on my desk for about two weeks. In long term, this will cause the clay to dry. But in these two weeks, it just got hardened and made my job easier. If you have time, you may want to try leaving your cane out for a while before working with it.

Gradient Flower

When I realized that I haven’t done any polymer clay work this month, I set out to play with them. I immediately remembered exactly why I haven’t been touching them for a while. I have spent most of my day fighting with my camera. There was sun light on my desk but not at all uniform and at a really bad angle for photographing. As I struggled and hours passed, things only got worse and I ended up using flash at the expense of quality. But at least I didn’t give up and here is the result: gradient flowers cane.

I have selected fushsia color. For the color you select, you can form the scale of colors as shown above by mixing the colored clay with changing proportions of white.

After forming the scale of colors, roll the clay pieces to same thickness. Form a cylinder from the darkest tone. Then roll the other sheets around the core cylinder in the order shown in the picture below. This will form the petals of the flower pattern.

Now to prepare the core of the flower, form another cylinder from the darkest tone and wrap it with another color of your choice. (purple in my case)

Now we have the petals and the core of the flower. All we need to do is to make a cane out of this combination.

By placing thin purple cylinders to the gaps between petals and by applying light pressure with fingers, slowly merge the petals and the core.

Be careful at this stage. You can easily distort the pattern. As a last step, I used another sheet of purple clay to wrap around this cane. The end result is shown at the top this post. I will post an application of this cane soon.

Brushes ans Patterns

The photo above belongs to my make-up brush that lives with me inside my purse. I decided to put a make-up on it by applying the polymer clay pattern that I used before to decorate a switchplate. I think this will be a good example to the use of clay guns.

Pick three or four colors and put the square disk on the clay gun.

After softening the clays, place them in the clay gun as shown. A word of caution; you will either need to use soft clays or have very strong hands for this application.

After extrusion, you will obtain fine patterns with varying colors throughout the cane. Cut the cane into six equal length pieces and stack them as shown below.

Apply slight pressure with your fingers and slice the stack. Place the slices on the surface that you wish to cover and use hand roller to merge the patterns. Then you are ready to bake.

Lastly, put the clay gun in the oven at 130C (260F) for ten minutes and it will be much easier to clean it up.

Golden Switch Plate

After a long time, I finally found a chance to work with polymer clay. Since we are currently redecorating our bedroom, I thought of this golden switch plate to go with the newly painted hot red walls.

As the base color, translucent, fimo’s metallic white or sculpey’s pearl white can be used. I preferred the translucent white. I rolled the clay to 1mm thickness.

After placing the golden leaf on the rolled clay sheet, I used a hand roller to elongate the clay sheet and golden leaf combination. Using a baking sheet as seen in the picture helps here.

The rolling forms crack lines and helps the golden leaf to merge with the clay. You can adjust the crack sizes by changing the pressure you apply while hand rolling.

The next step is to cover the switch plate with the clay. The key point here is not to leave any air pockets between the clay and the plate. Lastly, I suggest using a coat of varnish after baking and cooling. This will increase the durability of the golden leaf.

A very simple but elegant looking switch plate…

Flower Candleholder

When you are reading this post, I will already be on vacation. One sentence here, one piece of clothing to the luggage. T-shirts are coming with me, the computer remains here. Sun lotions are coming, cell phone remains. Books are coming, TV remains. Camera is coming only to take family pictures. All the things that needs to be done remains here. I will be detoxing my body, my soul and my nerves.

I had described how to prepare a flower cane two posts before. Now I will use different colors of the same cane to create a candle holder.

I sliced the cane and placed them one by one on a glassware.

After covering the whole glass, I use a roller with the help of a piece of baking sheet to merge the pattern.

After baking, you may apply a varnish but I preferred not to use on this one. Below is how it looks when you light the candle in dark.

Mokume Gane I

This is an adaptation of the old Japanese metal working technique called Makume Gane to Polymer clays. Well, it won’t look like the original Mokume Gane metal works if you have seen one but we will still get interesting colors and patterns. You can see a sample above.

I used a gold leaf and four different polymer clays, namely, metallic blue, pearl, translucent and white. The latter three clays might seem too close in color but they will be look quite distinct at the end.

Start with rolling the clays into thin sheets. How thin? Mine was less than a mm. Generally thin sheets will give you better results. Cut the sheets with the help of a square stencil.

And here are the results. I think it is an amazing effect. Different pattern in each slice.

Pink Flower

Spring has inspired a lot of bloggers to photograph, illustrate and draw flowers. Here is a tutorial of the same spirit.

I had prepared the same flowers of different colors for Mina’s room. Materials are translucent, fluorescent pink and metallic blue polymer clays. Begin with mixing translucent and fluorescent pink clays in the proportion shown below.

You will obtain a very light pink clay. Wrap a thin sheet of fluorescent pink around a cylindrical cane of the premixed clay.

You can elongate the cane by rolling with your hands.

Cut the cane into five equal length pieces.

Place the pink cane pieces around a metallic blue clay as shown.

Fill the gaps with translucent clay strips.

Wrap the whole flower again with a thin sheet of translucent clay.

After rolling and elongating, the cane is ready… This cane is especially useful to cover glassware and create a candle holder. I will publish a candle holder made using this cane on another post.

Faux Ivory Box