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Showing posts with the label Holiday Ornaments

Holiday Ornaments - Too Soon to Think About Making Them?

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It's not too soon to think about holiday ornaments - especially if you are making them!  The holiday season gets hectic for all of us and if you are like me I may get too busy to enjoy what I'm doing.  I find it relaxing to start making the ornaments in time to really enjoy the process.  Each year I decide what kind of ornament I want to make.  This year I decided to make these polymer stacked ornaments and teach a class at The Prescott Art Market.  The snowflake cookie cookers I've been collecting are the perfect outline shapes since they graduate in size.  For my prototypes I'm using some scrap polymer clay and chose these colors - a light, a medium and a dark - to overlap. Deciding which layers get holes and what colors to stack gives me the opportunity to embellish. Textures, rhinestones, lines, and embossing powder and the holes for hanging are added.   The ornaments are cured (baked at 275 degrees F)  and they are ready for hangers or ribbons. 

Making Transfers in Polymer Clay

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Lace transfer in center of ornament I did it!   I finally got the transfers to work!   Last Friday, I told you about the class I was taking on line (Heather Campbell and ‘Lady Luck Pendants’) and how I did not have the clay softener for the transfers.   If you missed that, please go back and read about how I decided to do Christmas Ornaments my way instead of making the ‘Lady Luck’ Pendants.   Also check out the other classes on this site: www.craftartedu.com    Lace Photos Transfered to Unbaked Polymer Clay   There doesn’t seem to be much sense in taking a class unless you try all the techniques.   This week I have all the ingredients and decided to follow the instructions for transfers!   Yes, putting the clay softener on the rolled out clay and placing the toner based lace designs face down on the clay with the softener between generally worked.   I had to really burnish the back of each design and as you can see from the photos some worked better than others.   I was abl

How to Make Handmade Tin Foil Ornaments

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A friend called and wanted help organizing a holiday sale for about 10 artists (I’m included) and the group wanted to have a Christmas tree decorated with each artists’ handmade ornaments.   I thought, “Great, another project! But why not?”   Several days later my ornaments are ready with directions so you can make some too!   It was such fun and did not take much time!   They could   also be insets in boxes, gift tags, book covers and more.   A great stress reliever too! Materials:   cardboard, tin foil, 2” wide silver electrical tape, a blunt tool (could be a medium ball point pen), a punch, acrylic paint, paper towel, brush, water, latex gloves, silver thread  Materials Needed  1.          Select cardboard (from backs of notebooks, inserts from packing, lightweight cardboard boxes) or heavy cardstock will work.   Remember you have to be able to cut it but you don’t want it so flexible it bends too easily.    2.        Select some shapes – circles, squares, triangles, rectangles