Frustration and release ( in tutorial form...)

This postal strike we're having here in Canada has made me feel cut off at the knees:  can't go forward, can't ship to people who've purchased from my shop and who are waiting patiently (they can all expect an extra something when they do get their orders..), can't get supplies.  Obviously, for large companies this is not a problem, except as an extra temporary expense for shipping, but 17 -23$ to ship small items (under 12$) is just not realistic for me or my customers.  The back to work legislation was introduced into the House of Commons on Monday, but may not make it through to law before the summer recess starts tomorrow!  Honestly, I would expect my elected members to stay and finish the job before they leave for their ridings for the summer, if that is the course to which our new majority Conservative government is committed!  My shop is now closed until this is resolved and I will be putting my efforts into new work and finishing up a heap of half-done stuff.  Trying very hard not to let this sap my forward momentum.

In a effort to distract myself, I have thought up a little tutorial to (hopefully) amuse you.  If you have read any of my posts, you will know that I have an obsession with hollow beads.  I am putting together a tutorial for purchase to demonstrate my way of making hollow beads, but another quick and simple way occurred to me for making hollow beads while I recently made some of my new 'Strata' beads.  I'm sure this has been done a million times elsewhere, but here is my take on it.

Before I start - another reason to make these beads hollow is that it is then easier to manipulate them into shapes a little different from the cutter shapes.  I highly recommend making your own cutters, see tutorial here by Daniel Torres (thanks, Daniel):
Cutter tutorial

Start with well conditioned clay - this is that dreaded of all white clay, the cheap original Sculpey in a box.  I often use it for prototypes, because if I can make something in that clay, I can make it in any of the better clays (and it will be stronger..).  Pick  two cutters that have the same profile, but one smaller than the other.  I chose Kemper circles but it could be any shape.

Roll clay into thin sheets (or your preference for thickness) .  Cut the larger circles - I find cutting on a dedicated silicone baking mat gives much cleaner cuts.

Start stacking up the circles till you have almost the thickness you want.  DO NOT stack evenly, you want the strata to be visible and interesting.

Compress your layers, but do not fiddle with the strata or smooth them in any way.

Line up the smaller cutter on the stack and take some care to try to get an even wall thickness.  Cut through all layers and remove the plug.  This will make your bead amazingly lightweight, especially if the smaller cutter is just a bit smaller.

You can see that the outside layers are still there in the above picture.

Next choose your top and bottom.  For this demo, I am cutting out of a piece of new crackle sheet that I made today.  It has a bit of cornstarch on it, so it looks a little dim...

Cut top piece and attach to a blank circle so that your top (and bottom ) are double thickness.  A single sheet is too flimsy to function well as a top.   Attach and compress slightly and integrate the top into the layers.

Flip over.

Attach the bottom and integrate. Add points of texture interest on the layers if you like - tweak the whole thing, make it a little off round if you like.  Push back an errant layer that looks like it got out of control - just look and see if it is how you like it!  Make a hole and inflate slightly if you'd like your piece a little domed.

Make holes and bake.

Then comes the painting.  I'm not going to go into detail because I'm doing a tutorial on surface finishes as well, but I'll briefly show another bead being finished.

This group of photos shows the raw ugly bead (square with layers), then the raw ugly bead being fearlessly covered with black paint, then navy paint, then the gradual removal of those layers and slight addtions of other colours to enhance the design.  Finally, it is waxed and polished.  A large round bead that I made earlier is beside it.

Here are the two cutters I made and used to make the big bead in the picture.

I don't have any more time to post more today, but will come back on Monday to show the crackle topped bead finished and a textured surface variant which is altered after assembly.

The possibilites for using cutters are endless so I hope this mini-tutorial gets you interested.  If you are not interested in making your own, Clay Factory Inc. has a great deal on the entire set of Kemper cutters.

See you Monday and hope the postal strike is resolved!  Wow, that was fun, must do it more often - the tutorial, I mean, not the rant!

Working hollow

I said on my last post that I'd be back to talk about bracelets...

It seems like a timely post if you are a follower of Polymer Clay Daily, as Cynthia Tinapple is showing the new work of Ford and Forlano.  Based on using hollow tubes with multiple layers of colours (shown by slicing) which are then sliced into beads and assembled, this new work is exciting to me personally because working hollow is my preferred way to use polymer!  There are so many ways to use it, although, like every technique in polymer, it is not without its difficulties.  I just can't seem to do solid stuff and this must be a result of working with inflated forms in glass for 18 years..(I couldn't work sculpting solid glass either but if you're interested look here at the work of Pino Signoretto!)

I also want to thank Maggie Maggio for most generously sharing her 'split ring' tutorial with the polymer community.  It planted a seed in my mind about how to make hollow bracelets smaller, by enabling them to stretch over even my ham hands (18 years of  working glass has some fallout - oh the scars!) without breaking!  Being smaller, they look better on and don't clunk annoyingly round on your wrist.  Being hollow, they have a lot more flex than solid polymer, although there is a limit and you have to choose your polymer carefully.  I wonder what clay Ford and Forlano use?

My interest with these bracelets is to make this natural, tendrilly form present a canvas for decoration - colour and more particularly - texture.  It is easy enough to make a stretched smooth hollow form, because as you stretch and elongate polymer, the textures blur, so I've found the initial lump that forms the bracelet is quite (hideously) different to the final piece. It is not like reducing a cane, where, if you are good at it, you confidently expect everything to be the same but in miniature!  The thought process is more, 'How will this 4 inch piece of polymer look when it is elongated to 1 and a half feet?'  You have to be prepared to go with the flow on this....Of course, you can then fire the piece and add things to it, but those marks and additions can be really out of sync with the form unless you are careful.  I'm getting better at adding things that don't jar the final feeling.

I think of this one as driftwood for your arm, I like the minimal colour (a little odd for me).

Altogether now!

 

I'm still testing the durability of these - I'll be wearing some white blanks that I've made over the holidays and taking them on and off a lot so, we'll see.  Meanwhile, think hollow!  I've got a lot of new ideas for thinning out the wall thickness as well.

I suspect I won't be back to blog until the new year, so I'm sending out a very big thank you to all of the people who've taken the time to read my blog and follow it.  I have over 100 followers now (105 to be pedantically precise..) and I enjoy reading your comments and suggestions so much!  Ah, idea!  I'm going to have a giveaway in January for one these bracelets and one of you lovelies can road test it for me. ( Let's hope it doesn't end up as roadkill...)  And on that note - happy holidays and a huge rest to all of you - particularly jibby and juna, whose fingers are sore!
                     

Giving in

Sometimes you just have to give in to the urge to work something through - even if the timing couldn't be worse!  In the last few days I've been struggling with the ongoing paint job at the house (enough said), listing on Etsy, making some custom orders and helping the kids finish their Halloween costumes (required for school tomorrow).  I swore I would not help them this year, but somehow last night I helped my son make a matador hat and today I have to finish the edges of a bird costume that my daughter has almost finished.  She is actually becoming quite handy with a sewing machine - an essential life skill in my little world...

When those serendipitous things happen in your work, it is such a gift that you should just accept it and work with it instead of struggling.  Sometime ago I bought a set of metallic paints to use with polymer, but every time I tried them the result was so disappointingly garish that I would throw all the results away and curse my inability to resist temptation in art supply stores.

These new beads came about as a result of using up scrap bits of transfers and putting them onto the surface of my hollow beads.  It occurred to me that this might be a good way to use metallic, because there is some movement in the action of applying the metallic tile to the bead which removes the static quality of painted metallic.  It's this quality that I think I've identified as being the one I dislike.

It started late one night (after cleanup) with this set of beads -

You can see the tile and the random texture I used to fill the intervening spaces - nature abhors a vacuum and so, apparently, do I!

Then a couple of days later I dragged out the metallic paints...do you ever have an idea you think is great and might work but you are almost afraid to try it because  you will be so disappointed when it doesn't work?  That mindset, that's how it was...this little fellow popped  up because stripes are on my mind.

I liked the fact that the metallic paint was visible, starting to break up, and married well with the texture.  So then these followed, all  taking little tiny steps towards other ideas.

I do like the painterly landscape quality of this particular set.  What's fun is learning to control the degree of spread of the tiles, and you do have a LOT of control - which I like.

This is the last one so far -

It has a quietness about it because the metallic is buried under translucent. Just one of the literally hundreds of possible variations for this technique.  I'm wondering if anyone would be interested in a tutorial on this technique, or if it is just my current enthusiasm that is making me a little blind here?  Do let me know!

Sorry for the long post - if I could discover how to put photos side by side on Blogger I would be a happy woman!  I think I must be missing something very obvious...