Monday, September 7, 2009

Sweets Overload

Just spent the day making miniature sweets to use for my granddaughters to give away to their friends for Christmas. Itty bitty teany tiny charms. I made pancakes with butter and syrup, a chocolate donut, peas, carrots, pumpkins, tomatoes, suckers, chocolates, snow cones and a big hand full of candy corn. I also made a tiny pitcher using the play dough flower cane for decoration.




I then made ivory/bone beads and faux jade beads. When I did the faux jade I used Pearl Ex to tint the translucent clay. The neat thing is that when the light hits the beads just right they have the green shimmer from the Pearl Ex. I used some left overs to do a natasha bead focal bead with the ivory.bone mix and jade caps.





I also used gold clay to get that fascinating mica shift by using a tiny ribbon of violet clay and then clop and flip to get the shine and veins. Wow did all of these turn out great.


I took pics of the candy corn as I made them to use for a tutorial which I will post soon. So easy and so cute.

I will post the pics of the other treats this week I hope.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Play Dough Technique Works!!!

Experiments are over and the technique works.

I printed out the pdf work sheet as the video takes forever to load, even with broadband DSL:


http://www.artbyyonat.polyclayplay.com/PlayDohVideo/PlayDohVideo.html



Holy cow. I didn't want to waste clay in case it didn't so I made a basic flower cane and added leaf sections.







I let it sit a minute while I found my grand kids play dough. I chose a pale yellow, also just in case, and did as the instructions say. A thin sheet about the medium setting on the pasta machine and cover the cane.






I thought it would spread and create gaps that the polymer clay would get through to the main cane but it didn't.


It almost creates a water soluble layer that protects the pc. I reduced it down and sliced to see that the flower still held it's shape.



I then pealed the waste clay off like pealing an orange and it came right away. The flower was very tiny.




I got a bowl of cold water to sit it all in to dissolve the play dough. This way using the small brush would not hurt the clay. I rinsed them off and changed the water twice to make sure and now I have a TINY flower cane that I can take slices off.



I used the cold water so the cold temp would keep the temp of the cane cool as it was warm in the house. All the play dough dissolved away. I added the scrap clay to the water so I could get the play dough off it to use again.
As a side note: If you get a call, just after you just added the play dough layer, to get over to your mothers house and call the ambulance make sure you have an air tight container nearby to place the cane in as play dough drys out fast. I sat my cane up where the cat could not get to it and forgot about the drying of the play dough so later I had to soak it in cold water to soften and then dissolve the play dough to add a new fresh layer. Did not hurt the PC and mom is doing much better.