Experiments in swellegant part 2

Finally  found a couple spare hours where i attempted to recreate my happy accident. This time I deliberately did not add the patina until the Swellegant metallic coating was dry.  This time I used copper metallic coating  instead of brass.  After baking, I added the Pearl EX varnish and once again the patina blossom occurred. Instead of a green tint one would expect with verdigris,  I got more of a blue tinge to the patina. It is still a pretty color.

Before varnish

After adding varnish

The sparkly bits are from some copper foil I added.

Happy accident

We are still busy with our move to Ocean Shores. It is a slow process, moving one car load at a time on our days off. Now that tax season is here, it seems we hardly have any time off together.

  This last weekend I had three days because of Presidents Day, but Dan had to beg to get Saturday off. We loaded up a lot of stuff for my studio and headed down after work. Saturday was a very busy day not only with unloading the car, then finding that my storage drawers I had such hopes of fitting in the closet were half an inch too long. Now I have piles of shoe boxes that I had unloaded from these storage  units taking up way too much space my studio until I can figure out another option.  Lord Opuson is like "just put the units in the garage", but I don't want to be traipsing out there every time I need another Mica powder or bead.

    Then at noon I headed over to the Gallery of Ocean Shores for a memorial gathering  remembering Ken Whitmore, an extremely talented photographer who was killed in an automobile accident several months ago. It was a very good turn out. He had touched a lot of people who showed up to pay their respects. Got to meet several members of his family and more artists that show at the gallery. Then at 5 o'clock, was the quarterly Gallery meeting.

Such a busy day I hardly had any time to play with my clay, but I did get in a few hours between the memorial and meeting. Being so rushed actually led to a happy accident with the clay. Before I went over to the memorial I had started to create some veneers using Debbie Crothers Swellegant tutorial.  In my haste I forgot instructions for adding the patina. The patina is supposed to be added when the
Swellegant Metal Coating is still wet but I forgot and let it dry. Then I put on the patina and went to the meeting. When I came back to the studio, instead of a beautiful flowering verdigris color, I had zip, nada, nothing...
 

 As you can see this is a real a lackluster veneer. There are a few sparkly bits, but overall pretty flat and lifeless. I figured what the heck, last time I had a butt-ugly veneer, I was able to save it. I quickly made a dagger pendant using it and a tiny bit of leftover pink veneer. It came out of the oven pretty ugly, and I thought for sure it was going into the trash.

That is when the surprise happened. When I added the glaze, all of a sudden the invisible patina blossomed.
    See the pretty blue patches ... they weren't there till I brushed on the varnish.

I am going to have to experiment to discover if this was just a fluke or if I can reproduce it.

Playing with Swellegant

Sometimes I forget that I even have a blog. Facebook seems to be where everyone communicates anymore. I am getting better at using FB, now that Twitter is were a lot of people talk or whatever twitter does.
   Anyway, I finally had a quiet day at the Gallery of Ocean Shores where I was able to spend time playing with polymer clay and Swellegant.  Debbie Crothers has written wonderful tutorials using Swellegant to create interesting veneers and beads. I just had to try it!

    First step: create the veneer. So much fun.

 Next step.  Create pieces from the veneers: apologies for the background... don't have my photo booth set up at the new house yet. These were taken on the windowsill.

 

 This poor little flower was my first attempt at cracking.  I overheated the clay and when I picked it up,  the poor thing cracked and broke in several places.   So it was backed with a bit of black clay and turned in to a pendant.

Another veneer I overheated while attempting to crackle.  I just kept pushing it into the clay core hoping that it would not crumble in my hands.  Miracle!  It held together.

Got into creating Dagger pendants with the next several veneers.  I am getting the hang of crackling. 

 Don't know if you can see the subtle coloring the Swellegant made on the black portion of this Dagger pendant.  In real life,  it is quite striking.

And my last beads ... to start with, this was the ugliest veneer I had made.  I had dug into the clay in an experiment to see what would happen.  I was not at all pleased with the result.  So, what the heck,  can't ruin it anymore.  Wrapped it around a  skewer and what do you know ... butt ulgy turned out nice.

Articulated Chaos

I have been so neglectful of my poor blog this year. So little time to call my own these days.
     Life has been throwing curve balls these past few months.  Schedule revision at the good old J.O.B. - I am now working 10am to 630pm.  Not to bad, but trying to get a doctors' appointment. .. what a pain that is.
    The best, and most exciting,  curve is that my work was accepted at the Gallery of Ocean Shores. I was very fortunate to be in the right place at the right time.  Being artistic,  one of the first things I checked out when deciding to move to Ocean Shores was the art community.  I had gone into the gallery several times during our trips there (car fully packed with moving boxes). One of the times I happened to be wearing a Chris Friesen inspired fire lizard pendant. The artist on duty that day really liked it and suggested that I bring some work into show the jury committee.

 Boy, was I nervous!
 But I got lucky ... they had just lost their jewelry artist AND had decided to expand the range of art exhibited at the Gallery.
   I set out my display August 1st and have sold several earrings already. A HUGE thank you to Marie Segal who taught me to make her bullseye earrings  (and graciously allows me to sell what a make using her techniques). They have been my best sellers.
    Another great thing about the gallery ... it is an artist owned 501(c)3 non-profit. That means am surrounded by artists. It is so inspirational!  NBAG (The Northshore Artist Guild) was invited to set up an exhibit in Aburdeen  (sorry, can remember exactly where ... too new to the community).  I challenged myself to try something completely different and paint with polymer.  I was originally told that the theme was Articulated Chaos and was to be  abstract in nature.  I had never done abstract before (unless Mokume Gane counts).
    I discovered I loved freedom I felt when creating this piece.  I had a sliver of an idea when I started. .. and  it grew from there. Started with several Skinner blends and my handy Christi Friesen clay tools .... I am very happy with the results. I hope that time allows me to explore this aspect of polymer more.

  After finishing my piece,  I was told that the theme had been changed to Oceanic. Luckily the painting looks like a storm at sea

Articulated Chaos

Chance meeting

Life has been so busy, so my poor blog gets totally neglected.  What with purchasing a new home, sorting out what to keep and what can go (and arguing with hubbie as to why I MUST keep most of my stash), slowly moving stuff to the new house and trying to plan for retirement. .. my life has hardly any room for my clay. I have had one clay day with the cladies at the Puyallup grange and was able to attend the annual Clay Camp in Goldbar last month.  Hope to attend the clay day next weekend, if we aren't taking another car load down to Ocean Shores.
      But I just had to share a wonderful gift the universe gave me yesterday.
      A bit of background is in order.  As some of you know,  I have a few cats. And with cars, come a few problems. This year has been the worst ever for flea issues. Apparently the pests are getting to be immune to most  treatments out there. We have been fighting them for months and it seems I am one of the lucky people that react badly to flea bites.   And they  just LOVE my blood! My feet and legs are covers with bites and they itch like mad. I try very hard to keep my nails away from them, but sometimes I wake up at night to find that I have scratched myself silly in my sleep.  Anyway, I read up on line what can help keep the buggers from biting me ... discovered certain smells they don't like. So happens that a hand cream we used at work contains ingredients that help keep the buggies away. Unfortunately, they stopped ordering this cream (guess it cost too much), so searched the Internet and found a store at a nearby mall that carries the cream.
   Now, I am not one that likes malls. I much prefer small, privately owned stores where unique items can be found. So, I hardly ever go there. That is what makes what happened so amazing.
    As it was on my way  to work, hubbie and I decided to have lunch there too. Standing in the food court, decided I would like to have Ivar's fish and chips.  Walked towards Ivar's and noticed a familiar looking lady walking towards me. I did a bit of a double take .... what on earth would Christi Friesen be doing at Southcenter mall!?!
    Sure enough, it was one of my very favorite polymer instructors and all around great person. She was in town on her way through to visit her daughter. We only had a chance to visit for a few minutes, but it certainly was a bright spot in my hectic life.
   Got to practice taking selfies and got photo bombed.

Future Fossils

I took advantage of the 4th of July sale at Craftcast and signed up for Staci L Smith's Fossil Talisman video.  I was very happy that I did.
    Since then I have been spending more time in the studio, creating what I have dubbed "Future Fossils".  The process is one that lends itself to batches, since each step takes time to dry or cure.

For my first attempt, just some basic shapes .... just to test out the technique.

I liked them, but thought the colors where a bit dull.  They had started out brighter, but when adding the different layers, they color was toned down.  

   So next time, more color was added as a base to see if the final pieces would be brighter.

Success ... much brighter color

The next experiment was using brighter colors still, and an unusual shape just to spice things up.

Started out as pepper red and sunshine yellow.

Darn blogger is acting up.  It will not allow me to insert the images in the order I want.  So I guess I will have to share the rest of my creations in another post.  Just as well that I am signing off, as I have to get ready for work.  I have tomorrow off, and may get time to blog then ... but maybe not, as my friend Jen and I are going to see the Minion Movie. Hope it is as cute as it looks in trailers ....

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.

Segal Inspired

I count myself as very fortunate to have taken classes with Marie Segal.

I first met Marie at Ravensdale 2006. At that time, I was new to the polymer world and did not know the extent of her history with polymer.  All I knew what that she was a very kind lady who encouraged me to put some of my pieces up for sale in the Ravensdale store.  I actually SOLD a piece!
  Since then I have had the opportunity to get to know her a bit more at several NWPCG Clay Camps.  And I try to take a class from her every time she has been able to attend.

This time, I couldn't wait to learn the secrets behind the lovely earrings she had been showing on FB for months.  I was not disappointed.  Since Clay Camp, whenever I have the time (not much now that summer is finally here .... so much to do that pulls me away from the clay) .... I have made more Marie Segal Inspired Earrings.

Using more of the translucent window cane 

Translucent window cane and mica powders

Translucent window cane, mica powders and mud

A bit of a different shape

Just used the shaping here, and a tiny bit of the window cane

For these, I combined Marie Segal design with the translucent canes I made
in Kim Day's class. Now I have earrings to go with the bracelet!

Left over clay when mixed gave me an olive green color that I used for the base
of these earrings

UFO Weekend

To those of us who are makers, the term UFO has another meaning. I am talking about the infamous Unfinished Objects.

I am one of those artists who just loves making the beads, but then am at a loss for knowing exactly what to do with them when done.  I have cubbies full of UFO's, beads I have made, projects I have started ... but I am trying to get more organized and actually finish something.  Lord Opuson was out of town, so I could just sit and play with my beads all day Sunday.  Heaven (so what if the weeds are taking over ... beads are more important, right???).

I first meet Christi Friesen on a Lisa Pavelka Clay Cruise out of New Orleans.  I think it was 2008 or 2009 (as I get older, the years blend together). I had admired her work and when I finally got a chance to take a class, I jumped at it.  She is such a dynamic instructor that   I begged her to come and teach in the Pacific Northwest. After about a year (her schedule is so full it takes a long time to get pencilled in) it became a reality. She presented classes in Everett and Edmonds, and naturally I signed up for both.

Her Everett class was a Firebird, that I FINALLY got strung this weekend.

 On the next Polymer Cruise I took when Christi taught, I was lucky enough to score a few of her heart pendants. She has told her classes, that whenever she gets stuck creatively speaking, she starts making hearts and soon her juices are flowing and ideas abound.  So that is why she usually has a plethora of hearts to pass on.  I finally found stones that matched her lovely heart pendant.

On this I made pendant, also Christi inspired that I made after her Edmonds class, I combined Steampunk and Floral elements. The large bronze colored section in the middle is actually a stone that I incorporated into the piece.

 Call it just one of those things, or perhaps the universe sending a message ... but I found this heart on a grape the other day.  Even if it was just a random bruising pattern, it still made me smile.

A moment of Zen

Clay Camp Earrings

I mentioned in my last post that Clay Camp Sunday was a day spent making more earring components.  I got a chance last night to start putting them together to make more Marie Segal inspired earrings.  I know that I broke the "rules" of photography by back lighting the photos, but I wanted the translucent windows in the colorful cane to show.

Used mica powders for highlights

Smaller earrings using only the translucent window cane.

Marie spent time with me discussing the importance of analyzing facial shape when considering earring design. Not all people look good wearing a specific shape, for example round earrings.  She let me try on various earrings she had made till I found the shape that looked best.  Even though I am very attracted to the round earring shape, in this particular design I look better in a rectangular shape.

They don't always need to be round

Oval Shaped

 A while back, Rebecca (aka Artybecca) showed on her blog experiments using liquid masking fluid as a resist. After picking up some masking fluid at Ben Franklin on the way to Clay Camp, I attempted to try my hand at it.  I did not have the fine tip applicator she was fortunate enough to find, so had to make do with a paint brush,  I like the idea and hope to have time in the near future to work with it more.

Newest earrings

Spent the day trying to learn how to download and edit pictures on my new laptop.   I have been really hesitant to upgrade because the new Windows is such a pain to use, but my old standby is just getting to be too slow.

I took pictures of earrings I had made with from my newest beads, and spent the last several hours trying to figure out how to edit them.  That was after I cussed repeatedly at the computer because it also makes downloading from the camera so difficult. Old computer, I plugged in camera, turned it on and it downloaded automatically.  New computer, I have to find the "my computer" function and them manually move the pictures from the camera. Probably is an easier way, but have yet to find it .

Darn thing is even giving me problems as I type this ... the screen keeps changing it's resolution and I am doing nothing but typing.  Very frustrating  ,,,.. I foresee a large learning curve.

At the last Puyallup clay gathering, Kim showed me how to make a leaf cane.  I am not a caner. I don't seem to have the patience for it, but I was assured it was an easy one to make.  Still have a problem with keeping the form of the leaf when reducing, but am told that too comes with practice.

 

Here is an earring made from one of the multicolored spiral beads I showed yesterday.

 

 

 

While putting away old beads on my worktable, I came across a pair dragon egg beads that I had made several years ago.  Finally made them into earrings.

 



And for my final pair ....these are not polymer, but I fell in love with these seahorse beads at Michael's.  Bought the string and made up these for me and a pair for my scuba diving friend. Hope she likes the beads as much as I do.

 





Wow, as many postings in 2 days that I have done in 3 months. Maybe the greys have ended?

 

 

 

Left overs

Some members of my guild (the NW Polymer Clay Guild) have been getting together for a day of claying around in the South Puget Sound area.  It is closer to home than the official Clay Days in Shoreline (north of Seattle).  We have had two gatherings so far and hope for more.

I had not played with clay all winter, so at my first gathering I got ambitious and tried for Mokume Gane.  I really did not like the look I got.  I forgot to add Julie Picarello's secret ecru blend that really make colors more harmonious. So, I had half a block of stacked clay left. What is so great about polymer clay, however, is the fact that (repeat after me) "there is no such thing as wasted clay"!.

I took the block home and it sat on my table for about a month, till I had some time to work in my studio.  I ended up cutting the stack into sections that I thought I could make a jelly roll out of. It wasn't wide enough however, so I ran it through my pasta machine at a thinner setting. This caused the lines to widen, but they were no longer straight.  They had waved a bit.
    I then took this wavy section, laid it on a thin layer of black clay and made a jelly roll.  When I sliced into the roll, I found that each slice had different colors meandering though the spiral.  Kinda neat.  I wish I had taken pictures of the process, but since I was just playing I had no idea that it would turn out cool.

Here are the beads that I made from the jelly roll.

I love how the colors blend and overlap in the spirals.

Can't seem to get beyond simple

 I spend way too much time on Pinterest.  I have three earring boards so far, polymer and non-polymer. You would think that unique designs would rub off on me.  But. ohhh noooooo!  When I sit down to make earrings, all I can do is put some beads on head pins and call it an earring.  I even sweat over which beads to use .... it can take me 15-20 minutes to find a configuration that is pleasing to me and it is just plain simple.   Fancy and creative .... that seems to elude me for the present.
    I want to expand beyond that, so I am going to be taking an earring class from Bea Grob tomorrow at ArtWorks in Edmonds.  Bea is a wonderful artist from Switzerland who is friends with Meredith Arnold (another well know mixed media artist from this neck of the woods).  Bea will be using Pardo Translucent, which I am very excited to finally break down and use.  She had some of her earrings with her at Clay Camp, and they are DIFFERENT than what I usually make.   Maybe something will rub off .... crossing fingers and wishing very hard....

These are some of the earrings that I made recently, mostly using the beads I made at clay camp.

Translucent clay. textured then highlighted with Pan Pastel Chalks. Kinda look a bit like glass.

Wonky beads made into earrings.  You can't tell from the pix, but the pink beads are bigger than the other two bead sets.

Clay was textured by rolling on a texture mat.  Beads on top were highlighted with chalk. The bottom beads were highlighted with Inka Gold Pewter colored paste.

Textured beads are colored with chalks. After baking, I used tinted Kato Liquid Clay to antique and give it a shiny gloss.  The brown bead was  created from a Sutton Slice veneer.  The light green was pearl clay tinted with ink.  Just used scrapes from my table .... no clay is ever wasted!

My favorite beads from clay camp were the green disc beads.  I really like how they turned out. The blue beads were made from the Rustic Bead Tut by Ginger Allman. The pink are simply textured with an old button, then highlighted with chalks.

During my picture taking session, I had help from a different source than usual. She was just fascinated by the dangles.

The Mighty Quinn looking to attack my earring prop.

Clay Camp 2014 Bead Review

Once again, Clay Camp has come and gone.  It is a time I look forward to every year, a time that passes far to quickly.  My work schedule has been preventing me from attending guild meetings so it was the first time this year I had seen many of my clay buddies.  Lots of fresh air, laughter, good food .... a welcome break from the stresses of everyday life.

I had plans for trying out new tuts, but somehow never got around to it.  Found myself playing around with variations of tried and true techniques.  Started out with translucent clay, attempting to recreate some beads I had made several years ago.

The bottom two pictures are my attempts at covering a base bead with translucent clay tinted with ink.  Really did not like how they turned out, so I used the rest of my conditioned translucent to try out something else.  I textured the clay and applied chalks to the surface.  I like how these turned out, esp. the green ones.

I revisited the wonky bead for a while, trying out a longer shape and a different stamp.

I must say I like the longer shape.  I think they will make better earrings.

I did start using Inca Gold Paste.  I had tried it in the past and it had come off the beads later. I discovered from more experienced clayers that I had to bake the beads again after application to prevent this (head slap ... duh!). Tried various textures and shapes.

I hear that orange is the new black.  Supposedly it is one of the summer colors
this year.  It looks good combined with pewter.

Also used chalks to highlight.  My favorite is the purple and rust crosshatched disc bead below.

Squat beads highlighted with Inca Gold, and a couple highlighted with chalk.  The teal beads have already been made into earrings.

The last afternoon, I got involved in making disc beads.  These I highlighted using chalks and finishing up with shoe polish.  The finished that parade gloss gives is just the right amount of shine.

I also had the opportunity to take a marvelous class with Marie Segal on Saturday. I have not done the final finish on those beads, so probably will have to wait till this coming weekend to complete them to the stage they are ready to present to the world.

   Every time I meet Marie, I am more impressed by her.  When she left her home in California for Clay Camp, she had no idea that within a short time that home would be in danger of being burnt down.  She conducted her class not knowing if she would have a home to return to ....  a lot of stress, but she handled herself professionally and as calmly as possible under the situation.

   Luckily, the fire was stopped before it reached their house. I have seen pix on her FB page of just how close it got ... and of some unfortunate neighbors who were not so lucky.

  It just goes to show that we never know what life is going to throw our way, so enjoy every little bit that you can when you can.

And now for your moment of cat zen

Tofur trying to help Mommy select beads to photograph.