Wanna join a contest???

There's a contest over on the Friendly Plastic blog. Have you seen it? All you have to do is a little marbeling in Friendly Plastic!



I hear a rumor that there aren't many entries yet, so the chances of winning are HUGE!



I love contests where the odds are in my favor. But I'm not entering....so there you go - your chance to win big!!!



And if you don't own a marbeling comb, well, just make your own. My tutorial is HERE!

Have fun!!!

Basement Babes via video conference!!!

Third Thursday today - what a hoot! Linda skyped in almost the entire day!



How cool is that? Now we just need to figure out a way to do this by video conference and everyone can join us for a fun filled day!!! Today, we had Linda teach her bezel technique via skype. I can't begin to tell you how much giggling was going on - really hard to hear her most of the time. But it was our very first attempt......and I know we will just get better from here.

This is the bezel that I did - around a piece of marbeled Friendly Plastic:



And here's the one Susan did:



I think there's a market here! How much would you pay for a private skype class? one-on-one....to learn how to do something like this? Or any of the techniques we've been working on lately? Well, of course, you'd have to have a video camera - but I just think this is beyond fun! And you don't have to pay to travel.....or even get out of your jammies! LOLOL!!!

Guess I'd better get busy - one month til the next play day - and we'll see if we can skype more than one person at a time!!!

Comparing marbling tools

I promised I'd get this up today and then promptly forgot! Guess I was just having too much fun playing this evening! The piece on the left is one swipe with the comb that I made, the piece on the right is using Amaco's comb. Same piece of friendly plastic. So I'm totally loving the one with the closer teeth:



I decided to quickly make a small tool with just a few teeth to it:



So that I could quickly do circles and small chevrons:



OK - Roy, I promise I won't take these outside, or in the car. But....if I put a layer of 2 part epoxy over the handles....then they won't melt in the sun, so problem solved!

Friendly Plastic - Make your own tools

So I'm sitting here playing with Friendly Plastic this weekend and I want a marbling tool that has twice as many teeth as the one that Amaco makes. I pop off an email to Amaco and tell the exactly what I want (well, how else are they going to know if we don't tell them stuff like this?) And then I remember reading a website where someone was using Friendly Plastic to make their own tools.

I found the site - Instructables

And of course the thought hit me - duh! make my own marbling tool!!!

I laid down Amaco's comb and cut a strip of Friendly Plastic the same size, and laid heavy duty straigt pins across it.  Not sure how this would come out, I decided to set them half way up the plastic as I didn't want them moving when I use the tool.

Once I got them where I wanted them, I placed the silpat which was already on my tray, on the griddle and let the strip melt and then pressed the pins down into the plastic:

Then I laid another strip of Friendly Plastic over the top of that and let it melt down into my base.

Looked like this on the griddle:

After it was melted, I dipped it into cold water and decided it wasn't thick enough, so I set the piece on top of a strip of black.  It definitely needs 3 layers of Friendly Plastic in order to have enough depth to feel right when you use the tool.

Here's my first attempt.  Yes, I can inlay and decorate the top, but hey - it's a tool!!  I may just leave it the way it is!  And it absolutely works.  I'll try to post my comparisons later today.

And yes, I still want Amaco to make me one because I like professional looking tools.  But you can see that I can now marble and chevron in much narrower paths and I think this is just what I was wanting!  If you want blunt ends to the pins, just take your wire cutters and cut them off.  I think I'll leave mine sharp - no kids here!!

I think it's just beyond amazing that you can use this medium to make a tool to increase what you can do with this medium!!!  Dare I show this to Kerry?  He'll be off making all kinds of tools for his model trains!  LOL!!!  And I just hope that the next time I'm going nuts looking for a tool that I can't find anywhere (I did google for a narrower comb and didn't see it anywhere).....I hope I will remember to try and make it using Friendly Plastic!!!