Tangents with Polymer Clay

A couple of weeks ago, I took Patrik Kusek’s Warm Connections Class with Craftcast  http://www.craftcast.com/classes.  I’ve been trying out some of his techniques for combining silver metal clay and polymer clay. 

Several years ago I took Lisa Pavelka’s https://www.lisapavelka.com/Gallery.asp  classes at Art Unraveled http://www.artunraveled.com/  and learned just enough about polymer clay to think I could do anything!  I made a large mirror frame for a client out of copper polymer and incorporated beads and copper braid.  It turned out to be about 42” x 54”.  The frame was made with many (I mean many) pieces of 3” x 4” copper ruffles glued to a wood frame.  The client still has it and I still remember my friend Phyllis working with me to make more ruffles. 

Polymer Clay Mirror Frame
I still have some of that clay plus a lot of other colors.  It takes a lot of conditioning to make it pliable but it works!  It also took a couple of hours to clean the pasta maker before I started on Patrik’s projects!  Seems I did not clean it well after the mirror project.  I’ll certainly be more careful about the cleaning from now on. 
Patrik is an excellent teacher and having the videos to refer to helped.  I made the silver clay pendant with a design on the back and the front would hold the polymer clay.  I made the canes and filled the circle as directed.  The silver, copper and purple clays blended together beautifully.   Yes, I was happy and baked (or cured) the polymer clay, sealed it and finished the pendant.

I had several small piles of purple, silver and copper polymer clay lying on my work bench.  I just had to use it!  I blended it and added pieces of the cane.  A bracelet! I wanted to make a bracelet and made rectangles.  I made beads, a focal tube and pieces for earrings.  I realized I was on a tangent that just had to get finished. 
Labels:

Comments

  1. Georgene LockwoodFebruary 17, 2012 at 7:14 AM

    Fun post. Sounds like you had a great time! Have you tried the new Crystal Clay yet? I bought some in Tucson and can't wait to try it. Nunn Designs has a video project on YouTube I want to try. Back to making flowers!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Learning As We Go!

Image
Viking knit is the oldest method of chain making and I've become fascinated by it.  Once I conquered the single knit, I decided to add beads.  I could have googled or asked how it was done but it seemed like something I could just figure out.  And I've learned a lot as I proceeded first with tumbled turquoise beads and then with pearls.  I thought I'd share a few of the things I've learned.   Iif you want a great tutorial on viking knit technique, Trina Ann at http://blog.trinaann.com/  has written a clear concise easy to understand tutorial.  I highly recommend it.    Tumbled tuquoise beads in viking knit  I used tumbled turquoise beads in the first viking knit chain and I did not really know what I was doing.  But I went right ahead and as it turned out, I liked the end result.  Since the beads were irregular in shape there was a random quality to the finished product. During that process, I began to really understand the technique of viking knit.  Loo
Read more

The Draw of the Mojave Desert or Why I Started Designing Jewelry

Image
When you look at my etsy stores you see Mojave Stone jewelry .  In the 1970's, my father and two brothers mined a stone in the Mojave Desert in the middle of nowhere California!  Actually, the mine was somewhat but not very close to Desert Center.  It had been a gold/silver mine before they staked their claim and began mining stone.  My family lived in Missouri and the stone had to be trucked from the desert after strip mining it.  I was married and away from home so I got to hear the stories of making a road, fighting off bees, surviving the heat, being careful of the critters and all the other 'Wild West' excitement.  And I did not have to rough it! Dad was going to retire (some day) and make and sell the polished cabochons (a stone cut and polished usually with a flat back and a convex top) for jewelry.  In the meantime, he had some distributors sell it, some metal smiths create pieces, and he trademarked it as 'Mojave Royal Blue' and 'Mojave Stone'.  He
Read more

Giving New Meaning to UPCYCLE!

Image
My first ever ‘Do Over Challenge’ was such fun!  I signed up to participate in Jeannie K Dukic ’s 6th Do Over Challenge not really knowing anything about how it worked.  I received a necklace that was very sweet with copper wire connections and pinkish pearls.  It sat on my work space for a couple of weeks while I pondered my next move.  One day I opened my polymer bead collection and was drawn to the pinkish and green beads.  They really looked good with the pearls.  I found some green crystal beads and a few other contenders.  But when I tried the small striped beads, I knew my combination!  This is the finished product for most of the pearls in the original necklace. It was the week to finish some of my long term projects.  I kept the wires with the red and green rubber bands from the braces I wore for 3 years.  When they finally came off, I asked the orthodontist if I could have them.  He wanted to know why since almost NO ONE wanted them and I told him I wante
Read more