Heart of the Week for 8/28/2011

I know, I know I missed last week's Heart. It was a perfect storm of end-of-the summer business coupled with half of us getting some sort of 2-day bug. I was very excited last week to get an order of frit from one of my favorite glass suppliers Val Cox Frit (http://valcoxfrit.com/). 

I was eager to do some enameling. I chose a geometric design and drew out two circles and a triangle on my ever-handy sticker paper.

I cut out the shapes on 24-gauge copper sheet and counter-enameled the backs.

I used ivory transparent enamel on the front..I love the warm tones it picks up when used on copper. I also sprinkled some of the warm-colored frit on just prior to putting the pieces in the kiln.

When they had cooled, I assembled the piece by pressing the shapes into red polymer clay and adding a polymer clay swirl to the front. I used liquid polymer clay to bind the pieces together.

After coming out of the kiln, I added a pin-clasp to the back. Viola!

Think Pink!

The Polymer Clay Artists Guild of Etsy (http://polymerclayartists.blogspot.com/) is having their monthly member challenge. September's theme is "Pink" in honor of our fellow member Kelly who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. Voting for the winner will begin on the first of September, so stop by and see all the wonderful and supportive submissions on the first. Voters also have a chance to win prizes so be sure to stop by! My submission is called "Pods in Pink" and are hollow form polymer clay beads and sterling silver.

Heart-a-Week for 8/14/2011

I love glass. It was my first true love, artistically speaking. In fact, I could spend hours at my torch just playing with glass, and watching the colors swirl around in the flame. So I was super-duper excited when Amazon suggested I look at the new book by Barbara Lewis on torch firing enamel called Painting with Fire. Before I bought my paragon kiln, I had tried (unsuccessfully) numerous times to torch fire some small copper/enamel pieces. The lack of clear information on the internet for this technique finally caused me to abandon the project. Now with my kiln I enamel all the time, but I wanted this book so I could A. finally learn what I had been doing wrong and B. learn this approach for making unconventional enamel pieces such as enameled beads.

I started out with my handy-dandy sticker paper and 24 gauge copper sheet. I must note that while 24 gauge is fine for a pendant, I will use heavier gauge next time I am enameling because several times while manipulating the pendant post-enameling, the thin metal would bend just enough to crack the enamel and I would have to start all over at the beginning again. Also, that seam where the two top halves of the heart come together provided another weak area where just a little movement caused enamel failure.

My tools for the project. Enamel, my cut heart, a few improvised mandrels and my old glass Hot-head and Mapp gas. Since I now have a flammable livingroom instead of a glass studio, I decided to do this outside. It was sunny and warm and thought it would work well. Unfortunately, the bright sun made it VERY heard to see my torch flame and the color of the copper as I was heating it up.

My first attempt I got the copper WAY too hot because when I put it in the enamel it immediately burned the glass a horrid black color. After much trial and error I got a fairly nice piece done and set it out to cool. When I returned, the enamel had all cracked and big chunks had popped off. According to the book, I did not get the copper hot enough and that caused my problem. So I chipped off the remaining enamel, scrubbed my heart (I really should have just cut a new heart and started fresh, but it was a matter of pride at this point) and tried again. This time it came out great and several hours later, still no sign of enamel failure.

I added a hammered copper wire bail and viola!

I could have added a few more layers of enamel to even out the color and reduce the black (which is, I presume, the oxidized copper showing through the thinner areas of glass). But I really like to the look of it, so I stopped at two coats of enamel.

All in all I learned a LOT. And I would highly, highly recommend this book to anyone who would like to try a new style of enameling, or who wants to enamel without investing in a kiln.

Heart-A-Week for 8/7/11

I need more earrings in my Etsy Shop so this week for my heart-a-week project I'm making a couple of pairs of earrings. I started out by making an earring blank out of cardstock and traced two pairs onto sticker paper. I cut out the sticker paper and stick it to my 24 gauge sheet metal.

Here are the hearts all cut out and drilled with holes for the earring wire. 

Plain hearts are boring, so I'm adding polymer clay flowers to the hearts. Purple roses for the bronze earrings.

And tiny yellow sunflowers for the silver earrings.

Earrings are baked to set the clay, and wires are added. These were fun to make, and I may make a few more pairs for the Etsy shop this coming week.

Heart-a-Week for 7/31/11

Today's Heart-of-the-week is a bracelet made of  Copper Clay Hearts. I rolled out the clay, textured and cut out 6 hearts.

Originally I wanted to connect the copper hearts with interlocking polymer clay hearts. I couldn't get any polymer clay hearts I was happy with, so I changed the design and connected the hearts with jump rings and bronze swirls.

And lastly, a copper and bronze flounder I made this weekend. I was in the mood to make something a little off-the-wall, and I am really happy with the way he came out. The stone is a ruby in ziosite cabochon I picked up at the bead show last July.

My Studio

Well, it was a busy weekend and I ended up not getting my heart-of-the-week into the kiln until this morning. Which means the heart-of-the-week post will be late, probably not up until tomorrow. Instead, today I'm posting pics of my humble studio space, which is lovingly tucked into the corner of our livingroom (someday when my husband and I build our dream house I have big plans for a dedicated studio room..for now this works).

A snapshot of the studio area.

Here are my kilns. The Paragon on the left is used for metal clay and enameling. The Chili-pepper on the right started life as a kiln to anneal my lampwork beads in, back when we lived in PA and I had a glassworking studio. Now that my studio space has carpet and no ventilation hood, I have to work with less flammable things! So, it has been re-purposed as a polymer clay baking kiln. I bought the colorful shelving unit at Joanne's but the shelves are lightweight plastic and come out of the runners if you put anything heavy (like tools!) in them..so it mainly serves as a space to keep my templates and paper in, and I store my sheet metal on top of it.

This is my metalworking bench. I need to get something to hang my flexshaft from...currently it is attached to the bottom left of the table, but that means I can't reach my bench block (on the right). Because of how the table is constructed, I can't attach both the bench block and the flex shaft to the same side of the table...so I'm improvising for now.

My humble tumbler, bought at Hobby Lobby for 30 bucks..lol. I'm saving up for a better one, but for now this works just fine.

My clay table. It's an old countertop screwed into a nightstand. I keep my misc. supplies like resin and paint in the drawers, and my beads, accents, tools and findings stored in the wire organizational cubes on the right.

This is my Clay caddy. I think it's originally supposed to be for scrapbooking supplies, but all the pockets are great to fit my misc. clay tools and gadgets in, and the big area inside fits all my boxes of clay tools and clay. (PS that's my dog Ladybird on the left..she just had to come over and see what mommy was doing).

Inside the clay caddy, I have 3 boxes of texture plates and molds.

Plus a box of clay sculpting tools (wood for polymer clay, stainless steel for metal clay).  and by big box-o-polymer clay.

And that's the tour. It's been a slow building process for a number of years. I have a few more big items I'm planning for (primarily a rolling mill and photopolymer plate/etching station)...but this works for me now.

Heart of the Week 7/24/11

This week I wanted to make a 3 dimensional form. I've never managed to get one to come out without horrible cracks..here's crossing my fingers. I have a big lump of copprclay that has been sitting in a jar for while. I have had problems getting it to fire properly..which is why I bought a different brand of clay. I felt the need to use up the last of the stuff I had laying around. I rolled out and textured my clay, cutting 2 hearts that will make the top and bottom of the heart "box" I plan to make.

I dried the hearts and then rolled out and textured more clay. I then cut out a thin strip of the textured clay and used slip to hold up the wall of my box.

After the walls dried, I attached the top of the "box."

Here is the fully assembled heart box.

After having several pieces of copprclay not come out of the kiln fully sintered, I did some research and found an article that suggested doing a "prefire" to burn off the binder before putting them in the kiln for the full firing schedule. I ran a 500 degree/hour ramp to 540 degrees, and held it for 15 minutes. Afterwords, the piece was black and brittle, and I put it directly into the carbon and fired it for the full schedule.

Here it is, fresh from the kiln, all shiny and fully cooked!!!

Well, there WERE a few cracks on the back of the piece.

So I rolled out some polymer clay and textured it to match what was already on the hearts to cover up the cracks. I plan to keep this as a personal piece, so I don't care if one side is a bit sub-par.