February 18th, 2007
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.
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February 8th, 2007
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.
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January 4th, 2007
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.
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December 16th, 2006
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.
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October 16th, 2006
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.
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July 22nd, 2006
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…
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May 21st, 2006
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.
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May 7th, 2006
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.
Stack the clay sheets with the gold leaf in the middle.
After applying slight pressure, cut the stack in half.
Place the two halves on top of each other.
Then repeat the cutting and stacking to obtain a multi-layered stack as shown.
Here is the creative part. Push a stick (circular section) through the stack (see above) to create a number of deep holes. Pay attention not to create too uniform holes for better results. I used a chopstick here.
And here are the results. I think it is an amazing effect. Different pattern in each slice.
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May 5th, 2006
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.
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April 13th, 2006
I had mentioned about how to mix ivory-like polymer clay in my previous post. Here is how I made use of that clay. I rolled the clay with the pasta machine at about 2 mm thickness.
Cutting the clay sheet along the lid of a box.
Small triangles out of red and violet will add some color to the box. I baked these for 5 minutes and left them to cool.
While waiting for the triangles to cool down, I add a figure and various other shapes.
Well now is the time to add the triangles. When I decide the decorations are enough, I bake the lid.
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April 11th, 2006
My favorite toy in my childhood was a figurine of a mountain climber. As I grew, I learned that the figurine was a gift to my father from one of his friends and that it was not to be scratched with a pen since it was made of ivory. Then one day a documentary taught me of the elephants being killed for ivory. I could not even bear to look at the figurine out of embarrassment for a long time. I even thought of burying it in the backyard. After all these years I still couldn’t give up my liking of the ivory tones which reminds me some very happy childhood memories.That’s why I was so excited when I made this faux ivory out of polymer clay. Ivory look without the feeling of guilt. There are a few ways to obtain ivory tones with polymer clay. My most successful try was a mix of Fimo’s sahara and translucent white. Although you can try darker/lighter combinations, I think the best ivory tone comes with 4 to 1 translucent to sahara ratio.
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March 27th, 2006
Finally I moved to my new study room. I still have quite a lot of work to do on the room but I was a bit scared of my love’s interest in the room. I should put a combination lock on the door or an electric fence could be a great idea too.
The teabag holder you see in the picture is a follow up of my previous post. I hate putting the used teabags on the sauces as much as I like trying different flavored teas. The solution is this…
Fist slice the cane.
Then use the roller to merge the slices without thinning them too much.
Place a teapot drawing on the clay and go over the lines with a pencil.
Cut through the pencil marks.
Use a piece of clay to form a donut shape.
Place the teapot shaped sheet on the donut apply some pressure while giving it the final look that you want.
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March 23rd, 2006
The other day, my love has called me at work and told me that almost all of the Turkish products in the market that sells them had past their expiration dates. Then he suggested to adopt Chinese cuisine at home. We like Chinese food he says and Chinese markets are everywhere. For a moment, I thought I lost him. I thought he was in love with a Chinese girl too. I dived into the conversation right there and urged him to talk to me openly if he had a relationship with a Chine girl. Then I got warning about not taking him seriously. He was only trying to find a solution to our kitchen problems. Moreover, he just loves me, a lot. Then he told that he already bought a wok, sesame oil, rice wine, black vinegar, ginger, etc… As soon as we hanged up, I started looking for cooking classes in the local community college. When I get home, a part of the kitchen was already allocated to Chinese cooking, and he was already preparing kung pao beef with a recipe from internet. I was still not convinced till I ate. It was surprisingly delicious.
I wanted to make a flower cane for some time. I thought a star-shaped flower would be the easiest. You need three different colored polymer clays. I chose metallic white, blue and orange (metallic orange is prepared by mixing metallic yellow and opaque orange).
Form the white clay into a long cylinder and divide into five equal length pieces. Then shape the cylinders to triangular cross-section with your fingers as shown.
Prepare a cylinder of equal length with the orange clay too.
Then form the shape shown below.
Apply the same method to prepare five triangular cylinders from the blue clay too and fill in the gaps with these.
Lastly, roll a thin sheet of blue clay to wrap the cane to obtain the pattern shown in the top picture.
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March 11th, 2006
I don’t know when did the last week pass. It was already Friday before
I knew it. And spring had already come. We were just starting to enjoy
the cafe that we have newly discovered but now came the times for the
lake-side and open air. It was getting warmer on Thursday when we
stopped by the lake for a few minutes though there was still a thin
layer of ice on the water. A bunch of ducks and swans were also there.
I wish I had my camera with me that day. Anyway, we will be going to
that lake side again pretty soon.
I had come up with the pattern below before.
When I was convinced that the spring came, I could not resist but
started to make butterflies. I could not stop there and decided to
introduce my butterflies to nature.
I cut the polymer clay patterns 1 cm. (~1/3 in) thick and used the roller to join them.
Then I used a cookie cutter to obtain a butterfly planform. You could
always use a paper print of of a specific shape instead of cutters.
A cute butterfly already ….
Before baking, I wrapped a baking sheet around the wings to give them a kind of flying form.
And they flew…
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March 4th, 2006
I was at home yesterday and worked
with polymer clays from eight in the morning to ten in the evening.
Since I was trying new techniques, nothing remarkable resulted. Around
10 pm, I threw all the things I made to trash and just as I was having
a disappointment crisis, my love came and saved me. We watched a movie
together and I tried convinced myself that the time I spent was not
waste since I learnt a lot of new things anyway. I get more upset when
I remember my plans of spending a total of 7 hours in ceramic studio
today and tomorrow. How to find time to all the things in my to-do list
is still a big question mark. The only useful product of yesterday is
the photos of the work that I prepared for my site.
Using a pasta machine to mix colors is very easy and fun. I chose two close colors but you could try contrast colors as well.
I cut the clays as seen above and rolled through the machine.
A key point in folding is that each color should fold onto the same color.
Repeating the folding and rolling for a while produces a nice gradient of colors.
When it reaches the level of mix that I want, I fold the clay in two as
seen above (again each color fold onto its equivalent) and roll through
the machine one last time.
Lastly, I wrap the clay as seen above and I obtained a spiral of colors
as seen in the first picture. Of course you can use this gradient
colored clay in many other applications.
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January 28th, 2006
I had spent my Saturday day and night with housework last week. I was my love who found a solution this week. He cleaned the house just before the weekend. I went to the studio today. Then I played racquetball and finally I am writing this post. It is thanks to my love that I still can find time to do the things that I enjoy. I had to give him credit here.
Today, I will introduce a technique that will result in slate-like looking finishes. I had a hard time photographing this work because of the glare. Just trust me that it will actually look better than what is shown here.
Materials: Black polymer clay, roller or pasta machine, black and white acrylic paint, glue, razor, baking sheet, aluminum foil, metal buckle base, paper towel, elliptic or rectangular stencil and varnish.
Application: It is better to use a hard black polymer clay for this application. Fimo classic or Premo! are two of the choices. If you do not have a pasta machine, you can use a hand roller to roll the clay into about a 0.5cm (1/4 in) thin sheet as shown above. If you don’t have suitable stencils, you can just create the desired shape with a computer and print it.
Place the printed page on the clay and go over the lines with a pencil. Then you can cut the clay following the pencil marks.
You will see sharp corners after cutting with razor. Smooth this corners a bit with a piece of baking sheet.
Crumple the aluminum foil and open it back. Place it on the clay pieces that you cut and use a hand roller with just enough pressure to create crack patterns on the clay.
Glue the metal piece to the back of the clay shape. You can also glue an additional small piece of clay across the metal piece as shown. Now you are ready to bake. Place the buckle in the oven such that the clay parts shouldn’t contact with oven surfaces.
After baking, allow it to cool. Mix the black and white acrylic paints and apply to the crack patterned clay surface. Immedeately wipe the paint with a paper towel before it dries. The cracks will be filled paint providing a slate-like look. As a last step, use a bright varnish.
Creator of the technique is Irene Semanchuk Dean
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January 20th, 2006
Jellyroll Candleholder
I used the
jellyroll patterned cane
that I prepared yesterday to make this candleholder. The photo above is
taken with a candle inside. You can see the photos without a candle and
in the dark below. Opaque colors make it vivid even when there is no
candle inside. Translucent clays allow the light to pass through it.
Glow-in-the-dark clays make it emit light in the darkness.
Materials needed to make this candleholder:
- Opaque green, opaque red, translucent and glow in the dark polymer clays.
- Razor, roller, varnish, brush and a bare glass candleholder.
Repeating the same techique that I described yesterday, I prepared another combination with the green and glow in the dark.
Then we cut slices of the pattern as shown above (for covering glass) and below (for covering wood).
The place the slices without leaving too much space in between on a clean flat surface.
Then use the roller to merge the slices. Putting a cooking sheet over
the slices prevents mixing of colors. Now you are ready to cover the
glass. Place the merged pattern on the glass shape and apply a little
pressure with roller again to help it stick to the surface. Try not to
leave any fingerprints. After baking, you can use a
buffing wheel to erase any remaining fingerprints and and provide some additional gloss. Lastly, apply the varnish with a brush.
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January 20th, 2006
Jellyroll Patterned Box
Not having updated the site for a few days cause certain amount of qualm
that pushed me to prepare this post about jellyroll pattern with
polymer clay. You can find this example in many resources about polymer
clays. The only reason I am repeating here is that I want this to be in
my archieve. You can choose any two colors. Most popular application is
with black and white but I will use opaque res and translucent clays.
The box above in another example of this pattern.
I normally use glass as working surface but this time I used a baking
sheet. The important thing is that the working surface must be clean
and smooth for successful results.
I rolled the translucent clay to 2 mm thickness (about 0.08 in).
Two layers of clay rolled to the same thickness are put on top of each
other. I put red to the bottom since I want it to be outside the spiral.
Cut the side of the clays at an angle as shown above to make the beginning of the spiral thin.
Then roll as shown above.
A jellyroll!, real easy. Now squeze the clays gently till there is no
space left in the inside. You may shape the clay into a square with the
help of a roller. Just be careful no to distort the pattern and not to
leave any space.
You can also shape it to triangle as shown by squeezing with your fingers.
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