"Show and Tell" or "What I was doing the last two days"

It's the tearaway technique.  Peculiar that I have been working with PMC for about 10 years and I never did this before.  It's so interesting.  My friend Lore just took a class from Celie Fago on the other side of the continent and learned this technique from her and so I got inspired to try it myself.  You can find the instructions for this in the book "Metal Clay Beads" and on the internet.  

First you roll out a thin 1/8th inch sheet of polymer, specifically Sculpey III.  You place a small scale detailed laser toner copy or laser toner print design in high contrast black and white face down on the polymer and rub it on with a spoon or a flat rock or burnishing tool, let it sit for about 45 minutes to a few hours and then pull the paper off really fast.  There will be a thin layer of polymer that has stuck to the toner and that's your stamp.  Bake it for about 8 minutes on the temperature printed on the package before using it.

Remember to grease your stamp with a bit of olive oil or hand salve before you roll out your clay on it.

I felt like I had it down so then I made a bowl.

 

and a pair of earrings.

Then I carved a mold and made a flower.

I fired and tumbled it.

I made a mold of one of my heart pendants and then made pieces for a bracelet, and finished it for a friend for her birthday.

It looks like a perfect compliment to the necklace she already wears.

Then I was inspired by the organic style of Kathy Van Kleeck and made a freeform ring with a fat little slab of clay and textured the flap with the tearaway.  I added the dots!

It did patina a pretty purplish blue color and I just polished off the high points. I've been wearing it on my left thumb and I love it.  I FEEL SO COOL and MODERN!

Yeah, so the thing that really got me thinking about the tearaway a while ago was this app I found for my ipod touch. It has the very strange name of "Re:NancyKPH - woodcut image filter" and it turns your photos into stencil-like or rubber stamp type pictures and one day I went crazy putting my photos into it.

Black is perfect for the tearaway technique.

And you don't have to use black, you can choose combinations of colors and graduate them in the controls of the app for some pretty fine color adjustments and shades.

That's what I was doing.  And I am so excited about learning that tearaway technique, matching it up with the ipod stencil photos and thinking I could make some stickers from those stencils for Journalfest trades.  What I am thinking about and doing is all so interconnected and I could just keep on going until my next idea arrives.

Thanks for reading. 

❀