from Garie Sim

Singapore artist Garie Sim is constantly trying new ideas in working with polymer clay, and he shares his knowledge not just with the childre he teaches in his classes, but also the online clay community.

He recently posted his experiments with using water-absorbing gel crystals as his bead bases so he can create light-weight hollow beads after either leaving the gel to dry out and grow smaller, or blowing it out as you would for an egg.

Click here to see pictures of his process!

Technorati Tags: garie sim, polymer clay beads, water based gel crystals, hollow beads, tutorials

Technorati Tags: printing on polymer clay tutorial, foah designs

Click here to go to the post

Technorati Tags: polymer clay smooshers guild, dragonsglass, alcohol inks, polymer clay

Technorati Tags: ipca, progress and possibilities, book

by Desiree McCorey

If the polymer clay world had a medal for “Helpful and Cool Tutorials, Tips, and Techniques,”  Desiree McCorey would surely be at the top of the list for receiving the honor!

She is constantly experimenting with techniques and tools for polymer clay, and is never stingy about sharing the results.

Her latest tutorial is for a geometric fish cane,  and she breaks it down into simple,  clear steps so that the complex cane is completely do-able.

Technorati Tags: geometric fish cane, fish cane how-to, polymer clay, tutorial, Desiree McCorey

by Sally Golubosky

A new class is being offered at Poly Clay Play Adventures for creating “Eureeka the Wonder Dragon.  There’s a discount if you sign up before April 4th, click on through for details here.

Technorati Tags: poly clay play, classroom adventures, dragon class, sally golubosky

Memory Brooches by Linda C. Moseley

We’ve had several letters and comments, requesting an easy way to do image transfers.  Well, we opened up the mailbag, and found a glowing recommendation to share with our readers!  Here’s the letter:

My friends and fellow PCAGOE (Polymer Clay Artists Guild Of Etsy) members, Ilysa Bierer and Kira Slye sell it at their website at www.polymerclayproductions.com and it is the easiest way to transfer images to polymer clay ever!

The paper is for use with laser printers only.  You print your image from a laser printer, burnish it to the raw, conditioned clay and then soak in water for a couple of minutes.  The paper dissolves, leaving the image in all its glorious color on the clay.   Or, you can burnish and bake the paper right on the clay and then run it under water.  The paper still dissolves, leaving your image intact.

Here are a few examples of what I’ve done with the MTP.   Ilysa and Kira will send you a sample to try if you contact them.   I buy it by the 20 page pack about once a month.  I will never go back to agonizing over messy, goopy liquid clay, decal type, or filmy residues again!

CF Originals

Inspired by science fiction writers of a bygone era such as Jules Verne, you can find many definitions and descriptions for the artistic and literary style known as “Steampunk” on the internet.   The Brass Goggles website, “a blog and forum devoted to the lighter side of all things steampunk” has a brief FAQ here.

Clay artists have begun to experiment in this genre, playing with the typical steampunk elements such as the use of gears and lots of aged brass.  Christi Friesen has a free steampunk heart tutorial on her projects and downloads page here.

Eugena’s Creations on ArtFire has a tutorial available for a gorgeous SteamPunk and Filigree Butterfly made with polymer clay and resin here.

Eugena's Creations

Technorati Tags: steampunk, polymer clay, cf originals, Eugena’s Creations

http://www.thimble.ca/?p=121 

http://www.squidoo.com/inkjetimagetransfer#module3026266

http://www.art-e-zine.co.uk/imagepaper.html

 http://www.art-e-zine.co.uk/image.html

I’ve also heard of using the Golden mediums, but I haven’t dabbled that far along yet. I’ve been too busy trying to figure out how the all in one thingy printer works.

Oh, I can’t let you go without giving you an image to transfer … The butterfly images are graciously  provided by CassisCreations  of Etsy. I just love her images! You may need to click the butterflys once or twice before they are an acceptable size. They’ll get a bit bigger.

 OH! Don’t forget about the give-a-way I posted about back on 10/21/08. We will be giving away the newest issue of PolymerCafe this month and every other issue after that. This issue looks a lot better than the last few they’ve put out.  So, go vote at PCC then email me at polymerclay@craftgossip.com with your name and which entry you think will win. I will be holding out on picking a winner until the end of this month. 

I do plan on figuring out what works for me and the right transfer method needs to get here sooner or later. I prefer sooner, in the mean time, I will keep you informed

Have a great weekend

~~Wendy ~~

ps, if you want more links to tutorials or have been looking for one in particular , let me know. I may have a source

Getting back to voting, While I can’t sit here and tell you word for word what’s in this issue of Polymer clay. I will tell you that the tutorials are great. I hope I get to keep it long enough to do the ones I want to try, or well ….. until I have to mail it to the winner sometime this week To be entered to win,all you have to do is go to PCC and vote for your favorite entry  then email me with who you think will win in the PCC drawing

                Don’t forget   Email me at polymerclay@craftgossip.com  if you think you know who will win

I just love the eggs on the front cover. They aren’t polymer clay, but the roses on top are. I don’t think I’d have patience for something that detailed. (I mean the etching on the eggs) The roses maybe, not the eggs.

Don’t change the channel, I’ll be back with how to go about winning this issue!

So that’s why I’ve ordered a Lortone tumbler. It’s the smallest one they make, but that’s all I need for no more than what I do. Besides, I’ve put it off as long as I could. I just didn’t want to fork out that much money on something to do the job when there wasn’t anything stopping me from doing it. Well, something finally stopped me, paaain.

I have been on the hunt for a Lortone (rock) tumbler for a few days now. I’ve scoured the web for the cheapest price I could find. I’ve been up and down the aisles of Ebay a hundred  times these past few days. I didn’t really want to buy from there, some of the sellers try to make major bucks on the shipping charges and that burns my buns. I compared many sellers from there and not to mention all the rockhound stores on the web that carry the tumblers also. Just when I thought I had my choice weeded out, I’d find something else I needed more info on, sizes, models, warranty’s, shipping charges, do I really need this, yes I really need this, no you don’t……..You get the idea, right?

Alright, I’ll get to the point already. I finally made my decision this afternoon and ordered a Lortone 3A single barrel tumbler. It includes a molded 3 lb. rubber barrel with quick-seal closure and a continuous-duty fan cooled motor. (Fan-cooled, that’s good right ?)  The barrel is: 4 1/8″ deep and 3 7/8″ in diameter, the capacity is 2 3/4 cups. Brand new, instruction book and warranty card are included . ( Okay, that sounds like a winner to me.) I plan on having plenty of beads for it to sand for me when it gets here next week.

The seller sent me a small how-to email that I’m going to re-read this weekend. Along with the letter and all of the great info that one of our dear mad scientists of polymer clay, Desiree McCrory, has spent countless hours to develop through trial and error, I will become a mad scientist of sorts myself next week. Don’t worry, I won’t leave you out in the cold. I’ll post about it here, you’ll just have to come back to see me if you want to know how I did.

Until then, if you have any pointers for a tumbler newbie, please leave them here in the comments for me I have a Lisa Pavelka DVD that I’ve planned on giving away to one lucky reader. All you have to do is leave me a tip on sanding polymer clay by posting a comment.  I’ll have my grandson to randomly pick one commenter on September 10th that I’ll send the DVD to.

Technorati Tags: polymer clay, sanding, Lortone tumbler, tumble sanding polymer clay, jewelery

These are the pedants I made using the mokume gane technique I talked about in my last post. I still need to do the sanding and buffing on them, but all in all they turned out pretty good for it to be my second attempt. Of course, I did my studying of a lot of other artist’s work and tutorials before I tried it again.

I used 3 different sizes of square clay cutters and a “rake” from a Zen garden! You can use almost anything to make your patterns in the clay. I have heard of people using magic marker caps, screwdrivers, forks, texture sheets, leather tools, almost anything and everything else!

The picture below is of the pendants I made using the leftover clay from the mokume stack I made. So, even if your experimenting turns out not to be what you were hoping for, smoosh the clay up (yes, that’s a technical term) and make swirlies or run it through the pasta machine to see what kind of pattern you get from that so you can make some striped pillow beads. They are as easy as pie! Then again, you can mix the clay completely until you have another color to start over with. Good luck!

Technorati Tags: polymer clay, mokume gane, polymer clay pendants, polymer clay tutorials, show and tell

I’ve tried the mokume gane technique/method before. Once. It wasn’t pretty, of course this is back when I first started out with polymer clay. I had only seen a couple of tutorials on it, and I was rather confused as to why they were poking this and that this way and that way . I knew there had to be something I was missing. I really couldn’t understand what was so great about what was basically “marbled” clay. Yeah, it was pretty and all, but nothing special in my book. Until, I happened upon a one Ms. Julie Picarello’s photos of her work on Flickr.

Then, I was flabbergasted, astounded, and most of all, bewildered! How in the world did she get her things to look so awesome? It actually looked planned, not random like the tutorials had shown. HA! Little did I know that you COULD plan your poking and pushing. Go ahead, laugh so hard that you fall out of your chair. I would too if I were you, now that I’m looking back, I see how stupidly simple it actually is, lol.

Now, I’m not saying it’s so simple that Julie hasn’t worked for a long while perfecting her technique for mokume gane, because rest assured with work as gorgeous as her’s, it’s all about work by the way of practice, practice, and even more practice until you can do it with your eyes closed. Then it’s perfect. Boy, do I have a long way to go. Hey, you do too, so you can quit laughing now and go check out the tutorials that are listed below.

The first 3 are from HGTV

 Bead Embroidered Heart brooch

 Face pendant and necklace

Puff bead bracelet

Here’s the link to GlassAttic’s mokume gane information - really good stuff here

Lindley Haunani’s version of mokume gane

Lazy woman’s mokume gane

and  one on Deviant-Art

I’ll be back tomorrow with the show and tell of the pendants I made today using the mokume gane way , they turned out rather nice even if I do say so myself

Technorati Tags: polymer clay, tutorial, mokume gane, Julie Picarello, Flickr

” Hey folks…….

Ok I just can’t keep it to myself any longer.  In the event I should croak before I’m an old old lady, I want people to keep making them. All I ask is that credit is given where it’s due.  I could have gone the marketing/selling/making money route, but every time I use a technique I learned from someone who gave it away, I think of the Stacker bead and how many folks can learn it.  I hope that someone can use the technique for other items, and have it evolve into something better. 

Enjoy:  http://www.ovenfriedbeads.com

Amy – Ovenfried Beads “

 Don’t forget to give her credit if you use her tutorial to make and/or sell you own beads from it - it’s the proper thing to do

Happy Claying !!!

Technorati Tags: beads, Ovenfried Beads, polymer clay, Stacker Beads, tutorials