Silk Clay, and Some More Friendly Plastic Embellishments

Friendly Plastic

I have made quite a few more Friendly Plastic embellishments from the pair of wings with a heart mould, and also a couple of faces from my Sculpy face mould which I have had for quite a while but not yet used.

I shall use these faces for my angel project. All the wings have now been painted with black gesso and will be finished with gold gilding wax and red acrylic paint as before.

On the left in the photo are some Friendly Plastic embellishments which have been coloured with silver and gold gilding wax. Most of these are from my existing stash. I am currently putting together a small collection of embellishments, die-cuts, paper flowers, backgrounds etc. etc. as a gift for someone who needs a bit of cheering up, and these Friendly Plastic pieces will go in that parcel. On the right you can see the faces mould and the pair of wings with a heart mould.

Silk Clay

The silk clay I ordered has arrived in the post. I ordered a small tub (40g) to try, but because it is so light, there’s plenty in the tub to make quite a few pieces and to experiment. If this is successful, a larger tub is available. Silk clay is a type of self-hardening (air drying) polymer modelling clay which cures to a rubbery, flexible consistency. It can be painted with a variety of media, both water and alcohol based.

There are lots of available colours, but I bought white because I thought it would be more versatile and useful.

From the next picture you can see the consistency of the clay. It is like very soft marshmallow, quite foamy and easily mouldable, and it has a slightly strange, but not unpleasant odour.

After experimenting a bit to find the best way to press this into the mould, I ended up by rolling out a piece quite thin, and then rolling it onto the mould, not worrying about it going over the edges of these very shallow moulds.

I made these moulds from Amazing Mould Putty, a two-part silicone rubber which you mix together and which cures to a flexible rubber after a few minutes. These particular moulds were made from very thin metal angel wings, and have presented me with a problem because the moulds are so shallow, and it is hard to get enough strength without brittleness from the various media I have tried with them. The best results so far have been from Friendly Plastic pellets – a low-melting point plastic, which resulted in quite strong pieces with enough flexibility not to break.

Here is the piece removed from the mould. In order to avoid stretching it, I turned the whole thing over, and gently peeled the mould back from the piece, leaving it on the craft sheet.

It was a simple matter to trim the excess away with scissors. You have to be careful when doing this because if you allow any part of the object to touch another part, it will stick, and when you try and pull it apart, it stretches, ruining the piece and necessitating starting again. The cut away pieces will also stick, so care needs to be taken.

The completed piece.

Several other pieces drying. The drying time varies according to temperature and humidity, I think – I have left them overnight, and in the morning I shall see how flexible they are.

These pieces are very thin, and may not be strong enough to be used alone. I have an idea that the definition of the moulded texture has diminished slightly since being removed from the mould. If they are not strong enough, my plan is to stick them onto a card backing, which I may emboss first for interest.

Watch this space for progress! I am grateful to Diana of Velvet Moth Studio for mentioning this product, which I had not heard of before; this stuff is interesting to work with, and very easy to handle, and I think I may end up adding it to my creative smorgasbord.

Mould Making and Stamp Mounting

I had my fourth chemo on Friday and although I felt awful for the rest of Friday, yesterday and today I am feeling quite a bit better and have managed to do a few things. The worst part has been raging peripheral neuropathy in my hands and feet and the only thing to do is to keep them as warm as possible – not easy doing things with 2 pairs of gloves on!! Last time I had a good weekend but then crashed for the rest of the first week, so I am hoping this won’t happen again. Things were much better in the second and third week though, so I think the reduced dose is helping.

Yesterday I spent some time working on editing images for one of the secret projects I am working on, and this morning I decided to make some moulds from the new metal embellishments and gearwheels I got on Ebay last week. For one of the projects I am working on, I wanted to use a particular rubber stamp from a set I bought ages ago but hadn’t yet used, and I hadn’t realised that I had never got around to mounting them, so I did that today, too.

Mould Making

In addition to the gearwheels, I also got a couple of metal pairs of wings and hearts from Ebay. All these metal embellishments are quite heavy for use on cards, and are better on albums and other projects, so I decided to make moulds from them – that way you can use the originals with impunity, but still have an endless supply! I make them up in Friendly Plastic or UTEE or polymer clay, or even Polyfilla One Fill (Joint Compound) – whatever takes my fancy.

I finished the EasyMold Silicone Putty (the purple sort) and then started the Amazing Mold Putty (yellow) to finish this project. Need to order some more of this!

The putty comes in two pots, one coloured and one white. You take equal quantities of each, and mix them together until you can no longer see any streaking, and then you press the object into it. It cures really quickly so you need to work fast – the large mould in the picture (the pair of wings and the heart) was starting to go off while I made the impression because I didn’t mix up enough to start with, so I am not sure how well that one will work. I can always make it again if it’s not a success.

Once they are set, you can pull the object out, but you shouldn’t use the moulds until they are fully cured. I usually leave them overnight to be sure.

Stamp Mounting

My last attempt at stamp mounting using EZ Mount Foam was a bit different! Usually this is a horrendously sticky and unpleasant job, and even with Tim Holtz’ wonderful non-stick scissors with their micro-serrated blades, they get coated with sticky gunk and have to be cleaned off, and it gets all over your hands… So last time I decided to use my hot knife, after seeing a Youtube video on this, and while it worked really well, it made the most humungous smell which took a long time to get rid of!

This time, therefore, I decided on the Talc Method. I always keep a jar of unperfumed talk on my work desk as it has all sorts of uses. This time I sprinkled some on the craft mat and rubbed some on the blades of the scissors and cut out the stamps which I had already stuck onto the ultra-sticky surface. I put the clippings into the talc and kept adding more to my fingers and to the scissors, and the result was pretty good!

Clean-up was easy afterwards – all the bits went in the rubbish bin and didn’t stick to my hands. I wiped off as much talc as I could from the surface of the stamps, and put them back on their packaging. The scissors had a bit of glue on them (minimal) and I used a quick spray of Stick Away from Crafters’ Companion (an essential part of my kit).

Nice job, eh?

More later, on how I use these things.

Birthday Card for my Hubby

My hubby’s birthday is on Tuesday, and I am so glad that Mr. Mojo and Mrs. Muse have decided to return from their unexpected long holiday and come to my rescue, so that I could make him a mixed media card! He has been so brilliant over the past months and I want to show my appreciation for him in every way that I can.

I am still taking baby steps creatively, and didn’t want to take on a huge project, so I thought it would be good to use some of the things in my stash to make his card. Here is the finished card.

Last year I had a session making alcohol ink backgrounds on the backs of some A5 fliers we’d picked up at the county show (I love recycling!) – they were on shiny paper.

I also embossed some co-ordinating pieces of card to go with each background.

For this card I chose the background using gold, silver, copper and pearl mixatives. This one had a nice co-ordinating card which I’d embossed with the Cuttlebug folder “Diamond Plate,” which is good and manly!

Rummaging through my stash, I found the Friendly Plastic gear wheels and other hardware that I’d made some time ago. These were painted with black gesso which makes a good base for adding gilding wax.

Also in my stash I found a few tissue paper hearts that somebody sent me once in a collection of die-cuts, and I chose one in a colour appropriate for this card, to lay down as a background under the embellishments, adding some gilding wax lightly applied with my finger.

Finally I made a faux porcelain sentiment for the card. You use UTEE (Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel) for this technique, building up the layers – I had several printed oval shapes  with “Happy Birthday” printed on them in a suitable font in my stash from a previous project. I used Versamark and my heat gun for this, and unfortunately it made the card curl a bit; I think it would probably distort less if one immersed the whole thing in UTEE in the meltpot, so I must remember this next time I use this technique. (Last time I started with a thicker piece made from several layers laminated together, and I think that distorted less.)

Here are some detail shots of the card.

For the “metal” hardware, I used a mixture of silver, gold and copper gilding wax. Of course, the metallic appearance doesn’t pick up too well on the photos.

On the above picture you can see that I have also applied some glass bead gel medium using a palette knife, and lightly applied some gold gilding wax with my finger, for a bit of added texture and to tie the design together.

I have had the large “blue steel” gear wheel in my stash for ages – I think it was a die-cut, and I cut it from a piece of card from Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate box! It has a lovely metallic shimmer to it. Across the bottom I added some glass bead gel medium with a palette knife and lightly rubbed this with gold gilding wax.

The inside of the card. I can’t remember where I got this sentiment stamp – it is part of a set of clear stamps I bought when I first started, and I didn’t keep the packaging. I don’t like clear stamps as much as rubber ones, and have only a few.

I inked the inside of the card, and the edge of the card base on the front, using Gathered Twigs distress ink and an Inkylicious Ink Duster. The card front was matted and layered with some brown cardstock. The Friendly Plastic embellishments were stuck down with Pinflair gel glue; the heart was attached with regular matt gel medium, and the large gearwheel with Scotch Quick Dry adhesive, and the remainder of the elements with my ATG glue gun. The faux porcelain sentiment was attached with two small brads through the matting and layering before I stuck that down onto the card base.

There is a lot of texture and thickness on this card! It’s a good thing I have a large supply of very heavy white cardstock for card bases or they’d never hold up, the amount of stuff I always put on my cards!

Recycled Mini-Album Pages–Clocks

This post is about the penultimate page of the mini-album, and deals with one of my dad’s most absorbing interests.

He was a keen and expert horologist. He collected many clocks during his life, and was a skilled clock repairer. Over the years he amassed a comprehensive set of tools for this purpose, including a watchmaker’s lathe to complement his larger engineering lathe. He was always sketching on scraps of paper – ideas for repairs, clock movements, etc. This album would not be complete without some pages on his passion for clocks.

I recently acquired a gearwheels stencil, an “ArtMask” from Carabelle Studio, called “Rouages Steampunk.” Strictly speaking, it is a mask rather than a stencil, because it is the background that is cut away. I tried to make a gearwheels stencil once, with the gearwheels, rather than the background, cut out, and it all fell apart and I ended up with a fine collection of acetate gearwheels! (I am using them as masks, and for sticking onto projects, so they are not wasted.) Anyway, in this case, I wanted the actual gearwheels to be gold, and the background to remain black, so I did a bit of reverse stencilling. To do this, I first painted the whole page with metallic gold acrylic paint, and while it was still wet, I laid the mask on top and secured it top and bottom with some masking tape. I then wiped away the gold paint through the holes in the mask. To start with I used a baby wipe, but this was too wet and it spoilt the design underneath, so I had to wipe off all the gold paint and start again. A piece of kitchen paper wasn’t sufficient for paint removal, so I took a fresh baby wipe and wrapped it in kitchen paper and used that, which was better. For the second page, I dried a fresh baby wipe slightly with my heat gun, and the results were fine.

I am pleased with the metallic finish on this background.

The next step was to lay down some images as the next layer of background – a scanned image of a diagram of a clock escapement, and some photos of various clocks my dad repaired. I decided to fussy-cut the background away and lay them down so that the background would show through.

Here is the first clock page complete, with the addition of photos and embellishments, and the trademark white border. The images in this case were laid down with soft gloss gel medium, so as not to interfere with the reflective surface of the gold background. The clock face was a cut-out, which I had distressed and kept for another project – it had been in my stash for some time.

The first photo I chose was of some clock parts my dad made from scratch, to replace some worn ones in a clock he was repairing. He would always try to reproduce as faithfully as possible any clock parts he replaced, to be in keeping with the period – for instance, adding metric threads, or modern gears in an antique clock would be an anachronism, which would have offended him, not to mention reducing the value of the clock. Next to this photo is a picture of my dad’s little repair notebook, packed with his tiny, almost illegible writing! (He was a doctor, after all…) In this book he kept a record of all the repairs he carried out on people’s clocks, and could refer back to this, the next time a clock became an inpatient in the clock hospital. At the bottom is a photo of a church clock movement he repaired.

In the above detail shot of the title, you can see one of the Friendly Plastic gearwheels I made several years ago, with added gilding wax and Glossy Accents (neither of which shows up very well on this photo). This was stuck down with Pinflair glue.

The next photo shows the second clock page with the photos added. A bit more of the gold gearwheels background is left exposed in this one, but there is a fussy-cut clock movement laid over the left-hand page. On the right hand page you can see a photo of one of Dad’s antique clocks – his oldest one, a 17th century Cromwellian clock that my grandfather picked up cheap in a sale “because it’s only got one hand,” when they were made with only one hand!

With the addition of borders and some text, the page is complete. You can see the tag puller on the right – more details about the tag below.

A couple of detail shots of this page. First, the top of the page, showing the gearwheels border I created, and the blue-painted clock movement (another church clock that he repaired) overlaid.

At the bottom of the page are photos of two models of different types of clock escapement that Dad made from perspex. He used these on an overhead projector to illustrate the difference, during his lecture “The Clock Doc – or Horology in a Nutshell,” his presidential address at his local medical society. Typical of Dad, he spent many hours making these models, and they were up on the screen for only a few minutes. They are now in my possession.

Preparing to make the tag. You can see the semi-circular shape I have punched out, and the printed clock face image ready to be punched out with the same punch.

The clock face tag puller attached to the tag.

The tag in situ, showing how the tag puller fits exactly into the semi-circular hole.

Because the two pages glued together to form the tag holder came at the end of the clock section, the reverse of the tag is different. Here you can see the stamp I used – one from the Stamp Attack Butterfly Doodle Dallions set.

I used some Cosmic Shimmer Lapis Cobalt Aurora fine embossing powder to stamp the image, and then three different Perfect Pearls (Plum, Kiwi and Turquoise) applied like watercolours to colour the image. After this I punched out the shape.

To complete the tag puller, I distressed the edges with Black Soot distress ink.

Here is the reverse of the tag, with the flower tag puller attached.

This picture shows the tag in place, with the flower tag puller nesting into the semi-circular hole.

The background and border on the clock side of the tag. I used an Artistic Stamper stamp for the background (“Cogs”), stamping with Versamark, and adding some Cappuccino Perfect Pearls with a soft brush.

Here is the completed clock side of the tag, with some journaling with my white marker pen.

Here is the reverse side of the tag, completed. As this lines up with the final page of the book, I decided to make this one a summary of all my dad’s qualities and accomplishments as celebrated throughout the book.

All that remains to be done on the book now is the final double-page spread, and then a couple of pages of information about how the book was constructed and embellished. If there is room, I shall add a couple of blank pages at the back for notes and further photos.

My New ARTHaven–Tidying Up and Getting Organised at Last

My cousin came to visit us today. She is a keen crafter, and I was looking forward to showing her around our new house and showing her the renovations, but most of all, taking her into my new ARTHaven and watching her turn a bright shade of green with envy! In advance of today, I knew I had to tidy up and try and get somewhat organised in there, so that she would get a proper impression of it as a working space, and not merely a dumping ground. Although there is still a lot of organising and sorting to do, it is all definitely taking shape now.

The office section probably needs more organising than the ARTHaven proper, but at least it is workable. After my latest tidying, this is how it looks now.

On the right, you can see the magnificent bronze casting of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, created as an apprentice piece in my grandfather’s foundry works in the post-WWII years. It is one of my most treasured possessions and I have not been able to display it until now.

When we were clearing my parents’ house prior to selling it, I saved a lot of Dad’s things, many of which are going to feature in the album I am making about his life. I have collected together some of the objects that he made, and things that were precious to him, or which were of particular interest to him, and I have created a little gallery of “Dad’s Treasures” on top of one of my book cases. Some of these objects look very strange!

There is a story behind each one, which I cannot go into here because it would make this post much too long! One day I may detail some of the items if anyone is interested. Suffice it to say that every one of these items has become precious to me, and reminds me of a different facet of Dad’s character, life and interests.

Moving through into the ARTHaven proper, here is how the main papercrafting area looks now, with Sheba (my Cougar cutting machine) on the left, and the display area to the right of the picture..

I have now set up my video camera, and the two clip-on lamps which I had in my old ARTHaven – the lighting in the new room is extremely good, with LED spots all around, but I thought I would add these two PureLite lamps to help with filming and photography. Not having tried this setup in real life yet, I am not sure if it will be OK, or whether it will need some tweaking.

Here are some detail shots.

The video clamp with the flexible gooseneck came from Maplins (very cheap!) and I bought two right-angle brackets with camera fixing screws from the USA on Ebay. I have used one of the bases of the old video rig to clamp this arrangement to, to bring it slightly further out over the work area, and have had to add a bit of wood packing to correct the angle of the clamp. We will have to see how it works! The camera is a new one, which I chose on the recommendation of Lindsay the Frugal Crafter – she has this camera and gets excellent results from it. All I have done with mine so far is try it out, and I haven’t done any serious filming with it yet – it was bought for the new room, as a replacement for the old camera which was a nightmare to use because it kept making my computer crash. The new camera has an SD card instead of tapes, which is an improvement, and it will film in HD.

Moving on around the room, I have now set up my display area around the old fireplace. After fixing up the shabby chic shelf unit that I got on Ebay, I began to have second thoughts about 3 shelves instead of 2, because they are so close together that you can’t really use them for many items to display, but the unit is so attractive that I couldn’t bear to replace it! Instead, I have put some antique china pieces on the top shelf, some jars of paper flowers that I’ve made on the second shelf, and on the bottom shelf are some boxes and other small items. On the drawer handles I have hung various items received from online friends, and there are more on the mantelpiece below – those of you who have sent me things may recognise some of them if you look closely!

Mixed in among these treasured gifts are some items I have made myself, including the binder on the right which I created for a craft show I took part in several months ago, detailing some of my past work. You can also see my small leather art journal with the “Tyger Tyger” page displayed, and pages from my Fine Art album (both works in progress).

This zone will be in a state of flux, with new work being added as time goes on, and the display changed. I have too many ATCs to display them all at once, so these are something which will get changed periodically. I am so thrilled to have an area where I can put out works where I can see and enjoy them.

Further on around the room are the sewing, textile and drawing zones. Yesterday I spent a long time starting to sort the cardboard boxes containing all my fabrics, embroidery materials and equipment, sewing supplies, crochet, etc. etc. There is still a lot to do. Some of this is now stored in the storage zone, and I am hoping to get some more Really Useful Boxes to house a lot of it – these look much nicer than cardboard boxes, and being transparent, you can readily identify the contents, and they are more durable.

On the work surface below the wall unit you can see a stack of three small vintage suitcases. These came from my parents’ house and I intend to store supplies in them – embroidery threads etc. They are all in need of repair, but I love the shabby vintage look of them.

To the left of them I have put my two German wooden buckets – I was originally going to display these in my new bathroom but found that I had more than enough stuff for in there, and thought I could use them as decorative containers in my ARTHaven. Here I have used them to contain some fancy yarns which are far too beautiful to keep hidden away in a box! To the left are two vintage boxes from Mum. The large one now contains all my decorative braids, and the one on top is a Chinese camphorwood box which at present contains some small family mementoes that Mum had collected over the years.

I decided that the whole final section of work top was probably more than enough for sewing and textile work, so I have designated the final zone as the drawing zone. Here I have put out my Zentangle album and sketchbook. On the shelf above are my pens and Inktense pencils and various other drawing bits and pieces, with the larger items like my dressmaker’s curve underneath in the floor unit. The curved metallic object just below the power point is the last remaining part of a lamp that Mum had for embroidery – it was in a seriously dilapidated state and had to be disposed of, but it had a magnifying lens (in the white bag) on a gooseneck. You can see part of my second retort stand with it, and when I find the upright for this, I will be able to mount this lens for fine work. I also have my dad’s glasses with telescopic magnifiers which he used to use for ophthalmic surgery before the hospital introduced their first operating microscope. Maybe I will be able to do my ultra fine 22+ stitches to the inch again!!

Finally, the storage zone, along the wall dividing the ARTHaven from the office.

This still requires considerable re-organisation but at least it’s a bit tidier than it was! The cabinet on the left was in the original bathroom, and was moved through into here when the builders started the bathroom renovation – in the nick of time, actually, because after this, my hubby asked if he could have it for the garage, and I told him no – I’d already snaffled it up for my ARTHaven! (Considering that he grabs all the plastic Chinese takeaway boxes for his Man Cave before I get a look in, I felt justified in taking a stand over this cabinet!!) The cabinet is brilliant because the central, open part, has shelves which exactly accommodate that size of Really Useful Box – unfortunately these won’t go in the cupboards because the door occupies half an inch of cupboard space when closed, but it doesn’t matter because when they are closed you can’t see what’s n them anyway – which is probably a very good thing, given how crammed with stuff they are – bits of fabric, loads of old sheeting, rug wools, etc. etc.!

On top of the ex-bathroom cabinet, and running the whole length of the wall, is a huge deep shelf for storing large flat things like mount board, cutting mats for Sheba, etc. This is often a storage area lacking in studios simply because of lack of space, and I feel very fortunate to have such a lot of good storage for all sorts of things!

Even though there is still a lot of work to be done to get the room how I want it, it is now certainly a workable space, and having got on top of most of the rest of the house (apart from some odd bits of painting etc.), I can now start being creative again!

With this in mind, here are the art deco doorplate replacements I am working on – at present in the Heat Zone, but there is a certain fluidity between the zones, and I shall need to use this area for mixed media as well, I think.

You can see the mould at top left, and the two I made from Friendly Plastic at the top. I have been experimenting with Polyfilla One Fill as a substitute (being very much cheaper) and although they are extremely light and feel fairly fragile, I think this will be a good option – they do not require any strength once in situ, and if I have any failures at the painting stage, I shan’t shed any tears over wasted materials! I shall probably melt down the Friendly Plastic ones and use the material for other projects.

The mat which they are sitting on is my new Presspahn ultra-heat proof mica mat – my original one is only A3 and not really large enough for my heat zone, so I bought this one which is approximately A2 in size. (For details of these amazing mats, please see the description in my sidebar.) You can see my melting pot just in-frame on the left. In use, this radiates quite considerable heat downwards, and was the cause of one of my (too many!) warping accidents to my self-healing cutting mats! I will also be able to do work with the soldering iron and other heat tools on this, and if I want to prevent the build-up of material and stains on it, I can always put a non-stick craft mat on top. The smaller Presspahn mat is now back under the non-stick craft mat in the Papercrafting Zone, protecting the surface underneath from my heat gun.

In the main work area, I have today resurrected the album I am making about Dad’s life – I opened up the box and showed the project to my cousin, and thought I would leave some of it out so that I can start working on it again.

Having the large moveable floor units will be great when working on this project, as they will provide me with a lot more surface to work on, and to spread out the materials.

When the room is properly organised, I propose to do a video tour.