Stamp Doodling ~ Part 2

Today I'm painting new pendants from my latest polymer clay "doodled" stamp…

Last time I gave you a little peek at the making of this stamp and today I'm going to show you how I used it. Polymer stamps are a great way to quickly and easily make several of the same design and they're a lot of fun too.

Grab some polymer and come follow along…

All you need is some conditioned polymer (not too soft though, or it will make a sticky mess on your new stamp! Leach if first, if needed), a cutter, needles for piercing, water, a large paintbrush, and of course, your newly baked stamp.

I like to measure out each of my pendants by rolling the polymer all the same thickness on my pasta machine and then using a cutter to cut the same number of pieces for each pendant.

Ready for stamping!

Next, I shape the measured polymer into the same shape, but making it a bit smaller than my stamp.

Using the large paintbrush, I flood the surface of the stamp with water, paying close attention to any deeper details.

Then I press the polymer into place, pushing it over the surface to the edges of the stamp.

Removing the polymer from the stamp is fairly easy—I start at the edges and loosen it all the way around working towards the center. Don't simply pull from one side or you'll probably have a stretched design. After several stampings you will find that the polymer starts sticking (the raw polymer will actually soften the baked stamp)—just carefully clean out any bits of leftover raw polymer (a needle works great for this) and pop it into the oven when you bake your next beads and it will be ready for many more stampings.

Pierce your holes and bake.

And then my favorite part—paint, stain and finish! Experiment with different colors in polymer and then layers of paint for varied looks.

Happy creating!

Mini Tutorial ~ Wildflower Molds for Bead Making

Hey everyone! As promised, today's post is another mini tutorial. Two weeks ago I shared the new wildflower molds I was working on. Are you ready to see the results?

Well… they all certainly were not as fabulous as I was hoping… the top four molds worked fine and had good detail, but the bottom four were not so great — some parts were either too deep or didn't show at all. Yes, the bottom two really are flowers, you just can't see the impressions!




Time to make more molds! Today's post was going to be on the bead making process, but since I needed to make new molds I thought I'd share that part with you first and then next time we'll start on the beads. So here goes…

(The molding compound I use is a 2 part 5 minute cold molding compound by Art Clay World USA)

Of course, I started with another trip out to my front yard and the fields surrounding my house. Living in the country sure does have its advantages! I picked more flowers than I needed — I wanted to have plenty for experimenting. I also made sure to pick some leaves too.

One of the main reasons half of my first molds didn't turn out well is because I was just blindly pressing flowers into the molding compound and had no way of knowing until the mold cured how the flower would actually look.

So this time around, I took all the bulky flowers and first lightly flattened them under a piece of glass. This allowed me to see how the petals would be arranged in the mold, and to carefully put them in place if needed before making the mold.

After flattening under the glass I pressed the flowers and leaves into the molding compound. When pressing the flowers in, I'm always careful to take note of the thickness and bulkiness of the different flower parts. For the mold above, I pressed the petals of the flowers deep into the compound, while only lightly pressing the flower's base — I want the main focus to be the petals and a big bulky base pressed in to deeply can easily ruin that effect.

More flower smashing! Not really — press just firmly — enough so the petals stay in place.

You'll get the best leaf impressions if you use the backs of the leaves where the veins are most raised. I like to add a little extra contour to my molds by pressing deeper on and AROUND the leaves, petals and anything I really want to standout. Adding that extra contour gives the finished casting a more raised look.

You can see that extra contouring here — around the leaves on the rectangular mold…

And here — I gave this mold a slight dished-out contour so the casting will be slightly domed.

* * *

Once all the molds cured it was time to try them out. Here are the results of some testing — all the molds worked nicely this time around!

Alight, now it's your turn! Go out, enjoy the fresh air and pick some flowers… and make some molds! In two weeks I'll show you a few new beads you can make with your molds.

Have a fun!

Three of my favorite polymer bead making tips

I've been making polymer clay beads for… uh… a long time. First for myself and my own jewelry designs, and now in the past two years for jewelry makers around the world. I have to say it's quite an honor to have my little creations put into YOUR jewelry designs.

In this bead-making journey, I went from just making beads whenever the whimsy struck to artists NEEDING my beads. Right. Now. (Yikes!) And so I had to do some things to keep my beads consistent in shape and size, streamline production, and reduce the turn out of ho-hum beads.

You might be thinking, "well, I don't make lots of beads. I don't even sell my beads. I do it for fun!" That's perfectly fine. But I've always found simplifying the mundane of any sort of creating leaves more time for imagination and play… so new ideas actually have a chance to develop.

So here are three of my favorite tips and time savers…

Tip #1. Freezing molded polymer. This one is my all-time favorite! (I have to thank my Aunt for convincing me to actually use molds for my beads in the first place… long story!! ;-) And the only way I can keep my beads consistently the same size. It also enables me to make deep molds and have my castings come out perfect each time.

Simply fill your molds with softened polymer, pack in, pop in the freezer for about 10 minutes, remove from the freezer and pop your molded creation out of the mold! They turn out perfect every time!

See the difference? The rose on the left is without freezing, the one on the right is after freezing.

There's no way I could make all these guys in an afternoon without the help of molds! I use Art Clay World USA five minute cold molding compound. The molds I make for these critters are simple——only to keep the basic shape and size——I add their fur, tails, eyes, and noses after casting. Mold details that are too fine, usually just get obscured.

My stash of most-used molds.

Tip #2. Leaching over-soft polymer. For my bead making, I do a lot of hand-sculpting and if the polymer is too soft, pair that up with the warmth of my hands… and you have one very squishy bead with very poor detail. So frustrating! Here's how I solve that problem:

First I slice the blocks of polymer to a thickness that will fit through the thickest setting on my pasta machine.

Then I roll each section through on the thickest setting.

Next I sandwich them between layers of white copy paper.

And roll over the top with an acrylic roller so they stick to the paper.

This is about 2 hours later——you can see already the excess oils are leaching out. Normally I leave the polymer on the paper for a day or two, depending on how soft it is, and then it is so much firmer and easier to handle and work with.


This last tip is really, really simple——many of you probably already use it——I thought about not including it… but it has saved many of my creations from the scrap pile, so I'll share it anyway…

Tip #3. Clean hands and light colored polymer. How many times have you ruined a perfectly good polymer bead by just touching it? And you had just washed your hands!? But now it has little bits of dust and lint stuck to it… into the trash it goes! For most of my dragon beads I use light colored polymer and one tiny bit of dust can mean I have to start all over. How do you solve the problem? Wash your hands, of course. And DON'T dry them on a towel——lint will always stick to your hands and then stick to the polymer. Use paper towels to dry your hands instead. And then the fool-proof way to be absolutely sure your hands are lint and dust free——roll a ball of scrap clay in your hands——it picks up anything on your hands and you're now safe to work that light colored polymer! I also always work on a sheet of copy paper so I never have to place my beads directly on the tabletop.

I don't have any photos of that one… but I bet most of you can picture it in your mind's eye pretty well… the poor dirty beads… and the perfect ones. Ahhh! Wonderful!


What tips and tricks have you learned from working with polymer? Any problems have you still stumped about what to do and frustrated?

Do share! :-)