Hot weather claying

Luckily for me I am a night owl.  My j.o.b. has been for many years in a hospital's clinical laboratory. Hospitals are open 24/7 so workers all needed to cover every hour.  Not being a person who likes to get up in the morning, I have worked mostly evenings for the last 20 years.  That means that by the time I get home at midnight, the house has cooled down and I can work with the clay with out it turning into a gooey mess.  I know that compared to the rest of the country right now, the current temp of 83 degrees seems cool.  But we in the Pacific Northwest are not used to it so it seems sweltering to me.

I have been working a bit with some textures, pan pastel chalks and inks.  Just a bit every night. If I wait too long to go to bed, it gets too hot to sleep after the sun comes up.

Most of us Polymer artists have a needle tool.  I discovered that the textured portion of the handle can be used to make little diamond like texture on clay.  I used this tool to texture white clay tubes, the colored with blue and green PP chalk.  After baking, I used black liquid Kato clay to fill in the recesses of the texture.  When I wiped off the excess liquid clay, I found that it also removed the a lot of the color of the chalk.
    To give a bit more zing to the beads, I mixed some interference violet into clear liquid clay that I had tinted with a few drops of Sunshine Yellow ink.
 

Blue chalk highlighted with LKC tinted with yellow ink

Green chalk highlighted with LKC tinted with yellow ink

 Then I tried my hand at a different texture sheet.  I had never used this one before.  It didn't have any design, just a rough texture. Exactly what I was looking for.  Once again, the black LKC took away the color of the chalk.  These started out as a bright yellow. Again I used a final coating of yellow tinted LKC to put some of the color back.  I really like the way these turned out.  Kinda Jade like.



Since the LKC was remove the chalk color, next I tried inks on the base bead.  I colored these with a green ink and then baked.  The color is kind of flat as I did not add any mica powder to the final coat, just to see what would happen.

I made up more white based and colored them with chalks.  Am itching to get back into the studio, but it is soooo hot it will have to wait.  I don't even get tonight .... One of the graveyard techs is on vacation, so I have to work a split evening/graveyard shift to cover. Don't get off till 4 am.

I am so looking forward to retirement and not having to clay around my work schedule ... of course, then I will be too poor to afford the clay LOL.  I am thinking about trying my hand at selling online.  Unfortunately for me, there is already a Polymer Penguin on Esty.