recently | on my bench

recently | on my bench...

a few good things...

1.an abundance of roses in the Veale Gardens.

2. early evening walks in the ocean.

3. finished a big zentangle.

4. pretty pink & yellow flowers on the kitchen table.

5. playing with letter stamps & bronze clay.

6. my 2015 calender - full of photos from my big adventure last year (printed by redbubble).

7. water & reflections in Alligator Gorge.

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.