when I found this great geisha tag on my bag at the kimono sale?
Here are two variations I did in photoshop for a couple of art stamps I will be using for trades at Artfest. Every year I make a set of art stamps to trade with other artists. This week I have been making my set. The stamps for this design are 2 inches by 1-1/2 inches. After they are printed out I cut them apart with my stamp edged scissors.
And do you remember when I carved out those polymer slugs (post of December 31st) with 3 different patterns that I was going to make out of PMC? Here are the step by step results of my process.
First I rolled out each layer onto the carved form, let them dry and trimmed them.
See, I didn’t make just one. That’s what’s so great about making molds! One will be a pendant and the other will be a pin! Then I sanded the edges perfectly, so there were no sharp spots, and used PMC paste to ‘glue’ the 3 layers together. This photo shows a few other pieces I have collaged together as well.
Below is a box with the 3 layer pieces and a number of other charms in their 'green' state. Green means they haven't been fired yet.
Once they were completely dry I fired them in my small kiln.This is what they look like when they come out. White and matte.
close-up of my 3 layer piece (Click on it to see it bigger.)
Here they are after coming out of the tumbler, shiny, smooth and gleeming silver.
And this is what they look like after I patinaed them with a “liver of sulphur” solution and polished them to get the patina off the high spots.
This photo shows my ‘butterfly’ and ‘cherry blossom’ pieces that were made from two of the other polymer molds I carved.
These two pieces will be the focal piece and clasp for a future necklace. The left side of the focal piece was made from a mold I carved. The right side came from the rubber stamp I used to stamp the mold before I carved it.
The hearts are going to be pins when they are done.
I call this my “tub o’ silver”. I've been making these for a couple of weeks.
My next project is making some chain with PMC. These links were squeezed out of a syringe that comes filled with PMC3 paste. I then torch fired each link when it was dry and assembled short lengths of chain.
Now I am going to paint each link with many layers of paste to get a built up texture. I want it to look kind of rough. Then I’ll fire each length in the kiln and assemble these lengths afterwards with the last few links. You’re wondering why I’m doing this. Well, I don’t want my chain that is this fine right now to have too much weight because each time I move it I run the risk of it snapping. Then I’ll paint those last few connecting links and fire it again. Why go through all this work? Because I think it will be pretty!
What are YOU working on? Cindy?