a bunch of brooches...

...are the results of my recent experimenting with polymer clay. I'm quite pleased with the results.

My original idea was for the buff coloured ones, with green or autumnal leaves (I really like the cream/buff colour I got in my second batch). The dark ones were really only came about because the purple clay is new & I wanted to play with it.

I used a mixture of leaves from the garden - salvia, jacaranda, geranium, mint & tree-that-I-don't-know-the name-of (it has these seed pods). I pretty happy with most of them, though I probably won't use the mint again.

Once they were baked, I painted them - green or orange/yellow (autumnal) for the cream, as I said. For the black & purple ones I used metallic paint. It's a bit hard to capture properly in the photos, but I used a combination of silver, copper, pale & rich gold. And a couple of coats of varnish to protect the paint.

If they look vaguely familiar it's probably 'cos I've shown bits of them before - only here, here, here & here though.

busy, busy...

I've been busy, preparing for the Wirrabara Farmers' market this Sunday (I'm sharing a stall with my Mum & sister) & also for the Laura Folk Fair, which is next weekend. I don't have a stall at the folk fair - our shop is right across the road from the main part of the fair, so we are kept quite busy. Also made another batch of polymer clay pieces - more leaf imprints. & it's Mum's birthday on Monday.

Anyway, photos of the market & finished polymer etc next week.

work in progress | playing with polymer

I've been having fun, working with polymer clay. Mostly with leaf imprints (plus a few stamped ones), the pieces have been baked, sanded, painted & varnished. Now they are just waiting for the addition of some findings...

imprints & 'out'prints...

After hearing about Scratch-foam from some of the ladies on the Metal Clay Heads team, and reading about it on Wanaree's blog here, I was very keen to get my hands on some. After a bit of (virtual) running around, a package arrived a few weeks ago.

I've been having lots of fun drawing on it & as well as using it to create raised textures directly on my metal clay (imprints), I had this idea to make some polymer clay stamps from some of the designs ('out'-prints).

First, I drew my designs on paper, then I put the paper on the foam & went over them with a ball point pen (pressing quite hard)  to transfer them to the foam. I then went over the lines with a small ball burnisher, making them as deep as I could.

After conditioning my polymer clay, I kind of smooshed it into the outline, them rolled it flat. (Ignore the coloured marks, I was experimenting with other polymer stuff - but that's a whole other blog post). I added handles to my polymer stamps (which you can't see in these photos, oops) & baked them.

At first I wasn't sure they'd be deep enough, but they seem to work quite well. I can't wait to finish & fire the pendant, so I can see the finished product :)

Did I mention drawing in the foam is heaps of fun? I could spend a day doing just that.