Saturday, September 5, 2009

Clay-ink-ops

I spent yesterday playing with my good friend, Peg. She is an amazing polymer clay artist and now I'm convinced she's just as willing to experiment as I am! We were supposed to try a technique from the latest issue of Polymer Clay Cafe where you ink up baked hot white clay and watch it turn colors.....but we totally failed our assignment! And I totally love our experiments!


For the most part, we layered 91% rubbing alcohol, and or 70% rubbing alcohol on baked polymer clay with alcohol inks and opals embossing enamels (on some)

And I think we tried every combination of layering that is possible:

and we used both hot and cold - baked and unbaked clay! For this one, I used a base of 91% alcohol, then a variety of colors of AI on hot clay, and let it bake a bit longer - then scrubbed it off and reapplied and rebaked....the combinations are just endless!

the shiny ones like this have a layer of Opals Embossing Enamels on the top:

This is one of my favorite results.....I think Peg needs to create a class for this technique!!! You all will have to come visit the Bead Lounge in Longmont where Peg teaches!

This one is a flop - but I still like it!

Love the raku look of this piece:

Oops! I fogot! This is my favorite one. And Peg used a stamp that she carved. Would you believe this is Stream, Butterscotch and Cranberry alcohol inks? Really fun how they change colors with heat. We used white sculpey clay for most of these pieces.

Til Peg decided to experiment with copper colored clay and colored opals embossing enamels:

I think her cobweb turned out perfect!

Again - this is simply stunning. She only did the enamels on part of the top and it looks like a pottery stone!

and this one is copper clay, colored enamels and alcohol ink to re-color the enamels!

Looks like a scarab tile, huh?

And this is my favorite of all the ones that Peg did!

Just a totally fun day playing with clay, experimenting - and knowing that we are coming up with more fun ways for you to play. Next week - we plan to try all these techniques on Friendly Plastic! Oh gosh! I can hardly wait! Maybe we will just have to set aside every Friday to experiment around here!!! I wonder where that fire extinguisher is! LOL!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I have totally loved seeing your experiments and reading about your creations. What a fun day it would have been. Thanks so much for sharing.

Anonymous said...

Beautiful & very inspiring! Thanks so much! :)