Polymer Clay Daily

Tips and Tricks

Friesen’s TP trick

The armature for Christi Friesen’s latest wrap vessels may make you smile. She uses a ball of wet toilet paper!

Christi reveals that, “The technique is simply to take some toilet paper, get it wet, wad it into a ball and wring out the excess water. Wrap the clay around the ball and sculpt! The paper provides firmness to work against so you’re not poking through the vessel when you try to add details. Once the vessel is baked, just submerge the pot in water until the toilet paper gets all dissolvey. Then pull it out. It’s fun.”

Her new vessels will be in the next issue of American Style magazine and her annual eBay sale is happening this week.

Korringa’s elegant solution

We gushed over Kim Korringa’s simple solution to her hanging blossom earring design. She bakes scrap polymer clay armatures with pins embedded in them and forms the earrings over the bases.

She lightly drapes petals made from four cane slices over the forms, offsetting the layers.

After baking, the petals easily pop off the mounds for assembling and finishing. Kim generously agreed to share her elegant solution with you.

Mills collaborates

Libby Mills polymer circle pendant

Libby Mills just pulled this beauty out of the oven and it has comes to you with a story.

The color palette she selected from her Moo cards! She selected 50 Colourlovers palettes that she loved and had a set made to use for inspiration and later to use as jewelry tags.

Mills collage materials

It’s a traveling personal paint sample set. Pick a card from your deck for instant inspiration. (These snapshop colors aren’t accurate but you get the idea.)

Libby’s background textures came from tablemate Laurie Propheter who uses textured fabric swatches to impress into clay. (Laurie has a great selection that she sells on Etsy.) A few extrusions later (see the canes) and Libby’s perked up her palette.

Flowers for Mother’s Day

Bonnet's wavy polymer flowers

Laure Bonnet’s polymer flowers scream spring with their intense colors, wavy petals and playful accents.

Bonnet's red flower wire wrapped necklace

Her wire-wrapped necklaces are perfect for a sunny Mother’s Day weekend.

I found Laure via the Parole de pate and gadouille (aka Sylvie).

Low cost extrusion

Breil's vise extruder solution

Helen Breil shares a low-cost polymer extrusion method which also uses a vice and replaces the plunger with an aluminum tube.

Helen explains, “I use the standard clay gun. I purchased an aluminum dowel at home depot. The diameter is 1/2” which leaves a bit of a gap where clay builds up but it’s not a big problem. For easy clean up I put parchment paper into the tube before the clay is inserted (shown sticking out of the tube in this picture) and then I put it all into the vice as shown.”

Easy extrusions

Tinapple's extrusion setup

Look to the right. In preparation for next week’s conference, I dusted off my video camera and shot a bit of footage just to get in practice. Pardon my deer-in-headlights look and messy hair. Filming was a spur-of-the-moment decision.

After years of searching for a way to extrude polymer clay I devised a system that works for me. (Here’s my old way.) Small batches, no clean up, easy on the joints – those were my criteria. Watch the video to learn my tricks.

The vise is my new favorite tool. It’s useful even when cranking by hand. Here’s the vise link. Here’s how to contact the Bullens Wullens (adapter) folks.

Campbell’s Poly Fiber Masking

Campbell's Poly Fiber Masking Technique

Inspired by the Synergy conference, Heather Campbell was prompted to test out some new ideas. Heather’s works are usually quite large and adhering polymer to slick surfaces is often a challenge.

“Polymer will stick to most anything, but I have found especially with larger surfaces that the clay if bumped or jarred will pop off or over time will shrink off the surface and then has to be glued back on. Here I am combining liquid clay with fabric or paper fibers to create a very durable background to then adhere the polymer components,” Heather explains.

The big photo on her site helps you see the fiber base onto which she’s added polymer embellishment.

The combination of the fibers and clay complement each other beautifully and present new textures and depth. She’s calling the method “Poly Fiber Masking” and she says she’ll get back to us later with more explanation of the technique.

Thomas thinks outside the box

Thomas' polymer button flowers

These polymer flowers with antique button centers were made by California’s Maureen Thomas for an “Outside the Box” show at PlacerArts center. She chronicles the progress of her project on her blog.

The flowers look so much like metal that I could hardly believe my eyes. Maureen gives a big hint about the technique she used in her blog post here. Clever girl.

Thanks to Randee Ketzel for bringing us the link.

Oops….I timed the post for the wrong time zone. I’m an April fool.

Crisp and starched from France

MissTyc's dots, stripes and textures

These dots, stripes and colors from France’s MissTyc have a crisp, starched, freshness about them and we’ve never featured her before (her real name’s a mystery).

MissTyc’s newest work seems to be on her Facebook album and you can find her on Flickr too. On her website she offers a sweet little spring dotted flower cane tutorial (based on Desiree McCrorey’s Spotted Langloisi).

MissTyc's bangle

Crisp and starched is not my mode this week. I’m waiting for my children to meet up with us for a family spring break. Shifting into vacation mode has been a slow and pleasurable process. Stay tuned.