Linda's Magic Workshop - Linda Britt Design

16 x 20 Finished Painting  Anyone who knows me knows I love to experiment with materials and color.  When the Prescott Art Market sent out the invitation to artists for the quarterly 'Changing of the Colors', I knew it was time to experiment with polymer clay in a new (for me) format.  Rules: a set size (16" x 20") canvas, all sides were to be painted black, and a set color scheme.  These will be hung June 2 and voted on.  Someone will get a prize so if you are in the Prescott area after June 2, please have a look and vote! A good friend of mine makes beautiful colorful quilts and I've watched her make the 9 patch pattern.   With a little guidance about quilt patterns from her, I decided to make a '9 patch' painting using alcohol inks, a straw, acrylic paint, wood and polymer clay. 5 1/2" square of white polymer with a coating of liquid polymer White polymer needed to be the base for the alcohol inks so their bright colors stayed bright. 

Recently I purchased Jeanette Kandray’s tutorial ‘Magnificent Mokume Gane’.  The pictures were so enticing that I just had to see and try her technique.  Mokume Gane is a metal working technique (Japanese) that fuses several layers of different colored precious metals together to form a sandwich of alloys.  The term is now used in many other mediums where different colors of materials such as polymer clay or metal clays are sandwiched.  In the case of polymer clay, we stack sheets of colored clay, make a design in them with tools or texture sheets, and carefully slice some of the top color away exposing the stacked colors beneath. Jeanette Kandray tutorial shares a technique that shortens the process considerably and produces varied effects depending on the choice of colors and texture sheets used.  The tutorial is well written and clearly illustrated.  In my opinion well worth the price of $12.00.     https://www.etsy.com/listing/457367494/magnificent-mokume-gane?ga_order

It’s been a while since my last post and while I missed writing them, I hope you also missed sharing my adventures!  Between a road trip to Berkeley and having painful (very painful) shoulder tendonitis my activities really slowed down.  Now I’M BACK!  Ready to explore new techniques and have fun. When I see a good tutorial about something new that catches my fancy, I buy it and eventually the day comes when I just have to try it.  Staci Louise Smith wrote a tutorial “Gold Rush: The Rustic Crackle Technique” for Craft Art Edu.  I loved the pictures of her necklaces and wanted to see what I could do.  If you like the crackle effect  on my pieces or want to try something new, check out her tutorial on   www.CraftArtEdu.com    They have good classes on many subjects. When I started following tutorials, I expected my pieces to look like the instructors.  That just did not happen and it is not the fault of the tutorial or the instructor.  It is that my mind and hands take the