Overall effect is still pretty orange - should have put in some alizarin.

Love these beads from Cara Jane

Shapes attempt 1

This was far tougher than I expected.  I learnt a lot, but it was mostly how NOT to do things.  I'll try and analyse what positive things I learnt at a later date.  For now I just want to record this picture of the finished item before I give it to my sister for Christmas.

She did request it, after seeing my copy of Helen Breil's magnificent book "Shapes".  Looked easy in the book.  I must admit the instructions were very clear... perhaps  for a competent polymer clay artist it would be pretty straightforward, but I'm a novice and made lots of mistakes en route!

I can see all the flaws I didn't manage to correct, I'm hoping my sister won't notice/mind :)

Crackle technique

OK, here are my first attempts at crackle technique.

Black Premo with IndigoBlu Autumn Blaze.

I love the colours of these flakes.  They are huge!  I realised too late that I needed to open them out before applying them and ended up picking off concertinaed bits, which of course did not stick to each other.

The technique worked nicely, but I ended up with too thin a sheet to handle easily.  When I put it onto a backing sheet, I must have trapped some air.  I only noticed after I had baked it.  Or possibly the air bubbles rose up in the baking and became more obvious.  How frustrating and disappointing.  I want to do a perfect job instantly.  Grrr.

I notice I also stretched the sheet in mostly one direction but then changed my mind and decided to even it up a bit.  I now see I need to either even it up completely or stick to one direction of crackle.  Also I need to pay attention to the direction introduced to the pieces when I cut for earrings.  I had been mean with the polymer clay and was then constrained into picking those pieces to get any at all from the clay.  I hate wasting clay, but have to learn to be a bit more generous with it.  I need scrap for one thing!

Also I decided to texture the back, but did it with a deep texture sheet which look daft on the back of the piece.  It needs to be something a lot more subtle for the back.  

I got the domed effect using my antique pie tin turned upside down.  That worked :)  It's just the right amount of curve.  I congratulated myself on getting something right, and determine to learn and move on.

I braided some metallic sari thread to string the pendant onto, but it is too stiff and the pendant is too light to make the thread hang well.  

It all makes a pretty blingy (I made up a new word) set which I am not sure I'd wear except at Christmas.

1. Separate the flakes into single thickness pieces to stick on your clay
2. Check for trapped air and slice and squeeze out before baking
3. Don't be too mean with the clay, it just makes things more difficult
4. Simple black cord goes on my shopping list
5. Don't be downhearted when it doesn't work perfectly.  Be pleased about learning something, Move on.
6. I suspect no. 5 is going to be the most important one.

Bead sizes

A bit more calibrating going on... I rolled some beads from a sheet of PC rolled out on number 1 and cut out circles with my round cutters.  (Jewellery Maker 25 Piece Multi Shape Clay Cutter Set VCZX34)
Then I made a round bead and measured the diameter with a gauge.

Smallest cutter: 9 mm bead
Next size up      12 mm
Size 3                13.3 mm
Size 4                16 mm

Here we are, my nice clean uncluttered polymer clay work station.  


I did the calibration experiments, rolling out the pasta, oops, I mean clay, to a sheet on settings 1-6, cut and made a stack 10 sheets thick, measured the height, divided by 10 to get the thickness of sheet made by each roller setting on the clay conditioning machine.

Interested?  Here are the results
Setting 1 = 2.4 mm
Setting 2 = 2.2 mm
Setting 3 = 1.9 mm 
Setting 4 = 1.5 mm
Setting 5 = 1.0 mm
Setting 6 = 0.5 mm 
and the last setting was too thin to measure, the clay get tearing as soon as I touched it.

Obviously far too thin to work with.

I thought it was a good exercise to get started with polymer clay, I was getting a good feel for handling it, and could tell when it was conditioned.  It did mean putting lots of layers on top of each other and then re-rolling everything.  Hmm.  I noticed quite a few air-bubbles.  I had a go at cutting them open with a blade, and then squishing the clay together again along the cut.  That worked well, but of course I was just playing with one colour.  If it had been patterned, my air-bubble slicings would have been noticeable I suspect.  Note to self: avoid treating clay like plasticine.  Not putting bubbles in to start with is important!

I picked my least favourite colour of Premo Sculpey to play with (the one I did the calibrations with) and decided to try a Mobius bead (see Jewellery Maker http://www.jewellerymaker.com/en-gb/how-to/create-a-polymer-mobius-bead.aspx)

My second attempt came out like this.  The first one was too small and thin to hold its shape. This one was from a square about 1" and about 2 mm thick.  To stop it collapsing when I made the second pinch, I stuck a tool handle (a thin rod in other words) in the first hole as I formed the bead shape.  It needed a bit of gentle encouragement to form a fairly symmetric shape.  I feel I could do that now with a black and white jelly roll, which would show the Mobius bead shape off beautifully.  But I've never made a jellyroll yet.

Thinks: Why did I start with something labelled "Intermediate"?

Well, I am getting round to it... husband agreed to retasking the old pasta machine into a clay conditioning machine.  Hadn't used it for years, assumed it had been put away clean.  Eeeugh!  Loads of dried pasta crud!  Amazingly, paper towel and meths did a quick job of it and it is sparkling.  (Should have taken a before and after pic)

Now to calibrate the machine.  It's a WL machine, and looking at the bottom of the box it came in, (yes, it was still in its box) WL stands for William Levene.  It's got 7 settings, 1 will make the  thickest sheet, I can see the rollers are furthest apart on that setting.