Polymer clay pendants using various canes

Previously on Artfire: Published On: 10-01-2012

Here are some sneak peaks at things I've been working on lately to give you an idea of what could be coming to the store soon!!




The above were made with a kaleidoscope cane.
This is my first brain cane!!



Made using a checkerboard cane!

These were made using a mokume gane technique! The first picture is skins that will be used for accent beads and above are focals made from the original block of clay.
This one is my favorite so far!! I used my brain cane to make a pendant, gave it a backing layer to thicken it up, put my own clay frame around it and put a top of there with a hole so you don't need an additional bezel or hole put in it!! Now to polish it up a bit and/or varnish it up... although I might dome it with resin instead...


All of these were made with polymer clay and have yet to be finished, just wanted to give you guys an idea of what should be showing up in the store at some point!!

Clay techniques - rolled cane and faux woodgrain

Previously on Artfire: Published On: 09-11-2012 

I was reading through one of my clay bead making books and finally got some inspiration after not having any for so long!! Look what I made!!!



These are my faux woodgrain with brown, metallic gold and gold.


This is my new purple, blue, pink and black cane!!

Wheeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Always Seal Papers For Resin Embedding

Previously on Artfire: Published On: 07-26-2012

Here's a quick post to show what happens if you don't properly seal whatever paper you want to embed in resin with mod podge or glue layer of about 2-5 layers:




These aren't as bad as you could get, true, and I didn't do a whole lot of embellishments in them (thank goodness!!) but it is still a little sad to see the soaking. It's so bad, I almost wish it'd soaked through the whole thing because it'd just be that liiiiittle bit more, yeah? Oh well, lesson learned, and hopefully these plus all the other examples out there will remind you to completely seal whatever projects you work on!!

Clear Resin Pendants with DIY Backing Decorations

Previously on Artfire: Published On: 07-26-2012

I found this blog that Carmi Cimicata does using Envirotex Resin to show the awesome diversity it has to it, and this is one of the many posts that caught my eye so much so that I just HAD to play with it in my own way!!

http://resincrafts.blogspot.com/2012/04/resin-shoes.html#



Aren't they just the neatest!!

She has the tutorial for making them on the link I provided as well as a bunch of other things so go check it out!

For mine however, since I didn't have a high heel mold, I used a little flower mold I have since they're thinner and would cure faster.



These are a few of the flowers that came out. Now, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with them, so I went looking through my scrapbooking paper pads and found this one!



It's pretty neat, but doesn't seem too terribly exciting on its own. When I put it under one of the flowers however, it took on a pretty neat look!!




Isn't that neat?! I think I'm going to have to try fabric and maybe paints next and of course I'll share so keep an eye out!

I might even make bunches of the clear pieces and sell those as lots so you can put whatever backing on them you want and use as jewelry pieces or embellishments or whatever!! What do you guys think?

Careful Selection of Resin Molds Required

Previously on Artfire: Published On: 07-26-2012

I got this awesome mold for unicorns a while back that I was very excited to use for clay and resin. I used one slot for a clay unicorn that turned out ok (should have used different colors or not as many since it was a little too much to see the details of the unicorn) but a couple weeks ago, I decided I wanted to make a whole bunch of glittery resin unicorns!!

I got out the mold:


And I proceeded to put clear resin in each hole (except for the dirty clay one, oops! forgot to clean!) and got this (will explain the missing chunk further down):





This was all well and good......until I attempted to push them out. I decided to try with this orange one I'd poured as it was near the edge (the missing chunk you see in the first picture). I tried popping out while it was still part of the main mold, but that didn't work so I cut that piece out and tried cutting into the plastic around it, halfway through.

No matter how hard I tried however, this thing would NOT come out! I am so very sad that these didn't work as I was just so excited to use these for little kid's charms and to give a couple to a friend of mine! **sigh**

Lesson learned : choose your molds very carefully when working with resin. Make sure that they are able to be bent and folded enough to pop these guys out and/or use mold release! I might try to clean that last spot and spray with mold release and try one more time just to see if it's the mold or the fact that I didn't use release with the others, but I'm betting more towards the mold wasn't quite the right one to use.

ACEO Art Trading Cards

Previously on Artfire: Published On: 07-25-2012

My friend at work recently got me into ACEO Art Trading Cards. I think they're a neat way to do sampling as well as sharing and collecting of artists work! Therefore, I have gone ahead and created 2 using first my pastel pencils and then my oil pastels with a woodblock stamp of trees in black acrylic paint on the foreground and added glitter to the pastel pencil one.

Here they are:




I think I'll actually try to make a whole set of these to see what variations I can get, but only 1 of each exact coloration and design!!

Anyone have any specific color/pattern requests for these?

First Attempt at Clay Scales

Previously on Artfire: Published On: 07-24-2012

I have been thinking it'd be neat to try to make a clay dragon statue lately... so I tried to start one last night:




I'm actually pretty happy with how it looks so far!! Can't wait to get back home and start working some more! Also, I have to create more body clay to get the legs attached and start thinking about the head? We'll see how it turns out... ;)