At two completely different times I was fooling around and made the twig when I was making magic wands and this was a small test. Then another time I was trying for a particular shade of blue and this was left over clay so I made this egg shape. While searching for something else it occurred to me that with a small addition I would have a complete project. So I made the tiny robin in the second picture. In order for it to securely stay on the branch I had to do more than glue it, so I drilled a hole in the branch and the poor birdies butt! Then I superglued it to stay. The addition of a chain and my TAD was done pretty quickly today!
...that it is now Day 8 of the TAD. Someday when I wake up I am going to find that I am really this super-organized person who was just having a bad dream for 66 years! But until then I still try to organize once in awhile but that only seems to leave room for more things to appear overnight! So for todays challenge item I am using two things I apparently made and forgot about, plus I needed to make one small additional thing to complete it.
At two completely different times I was fooling around and made the twig when I was making magic wands and this was a small test. Then another time I was trying for a particular shade of blue and this was left over clay so I made this egg shape. While searching for something else it occurred to me that with a small addition I would have a complete project. So I made the tiny robin in the second picture. In order for it to securely stay on the branch I had to do more than glue it, so I drilled a hole in the branch and the poor birdies butt! Then I superglued it to stay. The addition of a chain and my TAD was done pretty quickly today!
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Using a cab from the batch I baked for day 3, I made another pendant. The first one I have not incorporated into a necklace yet; this one however is simpler and can be strung on a simple rubber cord. Pretty straight-forward layer the cab onto a base, add the bezel like elements and bake. Then add the channel to the back for a rubber cord. The last picture shows it completed after Gilders Paste and I also glued in 4 small peacock pearls to the larger of the round bezels. The last picture is kind of muddy, not sure why but the colors of the pearl look good with the silver. Again this was an experiment and if I make one of these for sale the channel will be squared up more.
I have lasted much longer than I thought I would on this challenge! One thing that helps is having lots of bases baked so that half the work iss done for me already. For todays challenge I will be using one of the bracelet blanks that I baked for Day 3 of the challenge. Actually I am doing a variation on the silver bracelet I did that day. I wanted to see how I could get a faux enamel look and also use some of the cool nail polish colors I have (I never wear them as I have atrocious nails-I just like the colors!).
So after I used my extruder to make the basic strips to apply on the outside I made small (4-5 mm) balls of clay and randomly applied them to the outside of the bracelet. Using the handle end of the tool I pushed in each ball so that it looked like a small, round bezel. Once the bracelet was baked and Gilders Paste applied it was time for color. I simply put a small dot of polish in each "bezel" using an extra bracelet blank to hold the bracelet upright while that section dried. It would be more efficient if you did several bracelets at a time as there is a waiting period; you want to let each layer of nail polish dry before you apply another. But since this was an experiment I only did one. I think it turned out interesting and would like to explore this further some day when I have more time. .....................................Caution! If you are new to this, like I am!....................................... It has come to my attention that using nail polish on clay can have disastrous results! It can turn the clay all icky and we wouldn't want that. So far the little bit that I have put on hasn't harmed it but as a general rule it would be better to go with something else. Perhaps small colorful stones. That is what is good about this challenge. People giving feedback on each days project enables you to grow. And heaven knows I have a lot of that to do. I don't think art can exist in a vacuum it needs feedback and commentary. Playing with scrap again today; there seems to be an awful lot of that stuff around here...
I made cabachons from some of the prettier designs. Since I made a batch of them I will have some spares to make something later. Then I rolled out a sheet of turquoise textured it and cured it . I used turquoise because it looks a bit like patina peeking through the silver. After a light sanding I sandwiched a bit of the scrap cut in the shape of the cab between the cab and the background to give it a little more height. Next I extruded a string and pressed it around the cab to make a bezel, more texturing. I felt like it needed something else (I have a hard time knowing when to stop!) So I played around with more turquoise clay, making little beads and impressing them into the bezel. More curing and sanding and then the silver Gilders Paste. I only lightly buffed the faux stone cabachon so it would more closely resemble an actual stone. TAD for today is this faux stone pendant. "Cairn is a term used for a man-made pile of stones. It comes from the Scottish Gaelic: càrn. Cairns are found all over the world in uplands, on moorland, on mountaintops, near waterways and on sea cliffs, and also in barren desert and tundra areas." ~ Courtesy of Wikipedia One of my more favorite things to make with polymer clay is stones, fossils and artifact type objects. Most likely it is because I don't have to be perfect and I can use a good bit of scrap up that way also. Mother Nature is not perfect so I don't feel a great pressure to have each line meet or each shade match. Okay, I can hear you yelling at me out there....Nature is beautiful, glorious, inspiring...yes, yes it is. BUT it is not perfect. Interestingly natures anomalies are what make it so wonderful. But I digress..Cairns have always fascinated me; combining nature and the human touch they are often guides in the wilderness. So I made some of my own as my TAD for today.
Although it looks like I just stacked them they are too lightweight to stay the way I want; I drilled a hole down the center of each, purposely off-center on some. Then I inserted a piece of copper wire and super glued it. So the wire wouldn't show I glued one final small stone to the top. So many of the things that I do require a base, for example the beads I made yesterday; today's project is no exception. I love to make bracelets of all types and today is bangle baking day. I start with a base that I bake on a coke can (the kids kindly provide me with all I need); I usually use scrap clay for that. Depending on what I want the size to be I add clay to the inside as well as outside. The green bangle has a stone like finish on the outside and the inside is scrap clay with a distorted cane pattern. For the silver bangle I added scrap on the inside and baked it again; it has a bit of a wild effect as a nice contrast to the rather plain silver outside. I liked this but it was too small for my hand. I think I will make another starting with the cane base and add on so it fits me. The outside is three extruded half-rounds, painted with copper acrylic paint and then covered with Gilders Paste (silver) and polished and sealed.
For day two I wanted to use up some ultra light that I had sitting around, so I made a bunch of base beads. I also had some dark scrap left over so I ended up with a bowlful of base beads. I guess if I wanted to be lazy I could have stopped there but I decided cover some of the beads to use in a future project; not only am I easily distracted but I procrastinate - hence the "future projects" -it doesn't sound as bad as "I'll get around to it some day". So here is my TAD - a bowl of 'naked' beads and some that are 'dressed'. In the two bottom pictures I show some that I have covered with extruded strings. Actually the same ones I used for my chain yeserday. The top right picture is a bit of a cheat; I used the ultra light clay for the base bead but it is covered with tiny mosaic tiles. I don't really have an idea of what I am going to use the string beads for but the mosaic beads are going to something I already have in mind. It just might be another one of my TAD's.
My first TAD (Thing A Day) for Polymer Clay Central! Tah Dah! I started out being inspired by an Iris Mishley video and decontsructed the springs she showed to make a chain. I used three colors of clay that were actually something else I was trying out and didn't like. The color was a turquoise/copper green color so after constructing the chain with it I rubbed it with Gilders Paste in Antique Bronze with high lights of Antique Gold. The turquoise under color looks like a patina.
The strands for the spring/chain were made with my extruder. I bought it and then it went into hiding for awhile because - true to form - I got bored with it. But for this challenge I dug it out of my tool box. I think it will be one of the tools I use a lot for this challenge. I did complete a good length of chain; so I started to look in my 'orphan' drawer for something to complete this project. I found a piece that I had made using the Cabezel mold. It had been languishing waiting for the right moment, so I put them together with my hand-crafted copper clasp and here is my result! |
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