Making your mark

I've finally got back to making, I'm still waiting for power and water in there, but I'm not going to let that stop me. Not getting my hands dirty for over a month has been testing!

The studio is looking a bit more lived in now, especially as the kids have claimed half the table as their own. We hadn't even got the roof on and there was lego in it!

I've started off with making lots of my usual beads... birds, urchins, houses etc. I have a show coming up, so wanted to get those out of the way before the fun started and I get completely sidetracked!

It was while I was making some house charms that I got thinking about speeding up production. I like to put my initials on the bottom of some of my unique designs, but writing each one on takes time and they all end up different. I decided I needed a little stamp! There are lots of places you can send off for custom stamps, but being impatient I decided to make my own. I've taken pics as I went along to show how you can make one for yourself.

The tools you need are some soft cut lino, lino cutters (I got this nifty little kit where everything is contained within a stamp) tracing paper, (I use baking paper), a scalpel, scissors, a pencil and a biro.

Start by drawing around the end of your pencil on to the lino.

Take your tracing paper and trace the circle.

Draw your initials on to the tracing paper inside the circle.

Scribble over the initials with pencil, and place the tracing paper scribble side down on to the circle you drew previously on the lino. You need to trace your initials in reverse so that when you stamp they mark the clay the right way round.

Trace over the initials so that the image is transferred on to the lino.

Remove the surrounding lino with your cutting tools. Looking back at this, I think I would have got a sharper design if I'd cut around the edge of the image first with my scalpel, I will do that next time!

With scissors cut around the circle to remove the design from the sheet.

Glue the stamp on to the end of your pencil and leave to dry.

Test :) If the design isn't as sharp as you'd like, carefully trim it with the scalpel. Here's a picture of the final stamp with my scruffy finger for scale.

Now it's ready to use to make your mark and identify your work!

Caroline

http://www.blueberribeads.co.uk

Searching for a Voice...

This year I have endeavored to step out of my box as a jewelry designer/artist and try new mediums.  As I have documented here previously, I have new found love of clay...polymer and metal!  There are so many possibilities to create unique pieces.

So far, everything I have created with these new-found loves were formed/textured using store-bought molds/stamps, or molds I created using 2-part mold making medium and found objects. There are several great posts here on AJE delving into that process.

Earrings I made with my copper and silver  metal clay components.

I look at the results, and while I am happy with them...they turned out great...I feel like something is missing. I rolled out polymer clay/copper clay, stamped it, sanded it and cooked it per manufacturer's instructions. But I still need to make them mine!  After going back in the archives I found a couple of posts by Jenny and Diana about stamp carving...

I decided to give it a try, so I went to Michael's and bought some carving tools.

Speedball Linoleum carver and Speedy-Carve material

As you can see, I already had some designs sketched out, albeit not the most original ones....those will come with some practice though.

Here are my 1st attempts...

The partially done flower was the very 1st try, and I started too close to the edge, but guess what, it is my favorite!  I am going to redo it bigger and with more detail.  Here are some polymer clay pieces I experimented with.

Next, I wanted to see how it worked with metal clay.  Here is a pendant almost ready to fire!  I'm going to be firing a batch of white copper clay today!  Woo Hoo! Wish me luck!

Then I decided to try my hand at carving directly into the dry metal clay, like some of the masters, such as Celie Fago.  Again, not baked yet and a bit free-style, but we will see!

Will show you how these turned out another day!  I'm not sure if this was what I was searching for in finding my own voice with clay, but it is definitely closer!

Melissa Meman
Melismatic Art Jewelry
Art. Life. Love.

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!

Behind the Scenes at Tree Wings Studio: Stamp Doodling

Hello again! In my last post, two weeks ago, you all found me a little bored and taking a break from my usual bead sculpting routine. I was rooting around in my studio organizing and such, and I had pulled out some of my older polymer clay stamps. I used to make stamps quite often and I remembered how much fun they were to make, so for this weekend I decided to play with them again.

Care to join me?

Daisies are one of my favorites and with flowers really starting to bloom here finally, I couldn't resist. The stamp pictured here is one of my early designs—a fun design, but some of the details are too fine and don't transfer well to polymer. Today's design is a remake of that stamp. Sometimes I go entirely freehand, but more often I start with a (very) simple sketch just to get the idea out of my head and to help me keep my bearings as I work.

And the other reason I like to sketch it out first—pencil transfers to polymer fabulously well! I simply lay my design on the polymer and burnish it with the end of an acrylic roller.

Ta-da!

My tools of the trade—needles!

And the rest is really fun—using the needles I simply doodle away, "drawing" my design into the polymer. I like a rustic, carved look, so I leave the edges a tad messy.

For larger space that I want to be more raised, I'll cut out parts of the polymer…

… and then smooth it out slightly leaving a nice impression.

And there you have it! A new doodled stamp! I think I'll probably do a bit more refining (amazing how much you notice when taking photos!) and then it will be off to the oven… and then the first stamping! I'll show you how it turned out in my next post.

Have a happy creative weekend!

 

Explorations in 2014

2013 left me feeling drained in the creativity department.  I thought that by taking the entire month of December off that I'd magically become inspired again.  I was wrong.  I've spent weeks feeling blah, uninspired and just uninterested.  I finally decided I'd avoid bead-making a bit longer and work on jewelry.  That was the first step in my creative turnaround.  I submitted several pieces for publication and they were all accepted....YAY!

With that spark, I decided that 2014 would become a year of exploration for me.  I need new skills and a new attitude about my bead-making.  After speaking with some friends, I chose a few things to work on that I hope will re-inspire me.

Jenny suggested I engage in some sort of mini challenge each day.  Since I don't have decent drawing skills I'm going to attempt a small doodle every day in my sketch book.  Craft-a-Doodle by Jenny Doh will be my guide.

It makes sense to then apply those simple drawing skills to my ceramics.  I headed over to Dick Blick and stocked up on linoleum blocks for stamp carving.  As you may recall, back in July I attended a workshop at CREATE Mixed Media Retreat and wrote about my experience in a rubber stamp carving class.  I"m finally going to make regular use of what I learned there.

I also picked up two books to assist in my stamp carving; Carve, Stamp, Play by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer and Making an Impression by Geninne Zlatkis.  I see myself using original carved designs for pendants and for functional and decorative pottery.  I'm not giving up on beads, I just can't see myself doing 100% beads at this point.  I need some pottery time back in my life.

Now I couldn't continue to avoid making beads because I'll be vending at Berks Bead Bazaar in March so I had to force myself to get back to work.  Those beads are just a few of the pieces I made last week.  I'm working slowly but I"m also allowing myself to play with simple shapes.  I've decide that my pieces don't have to be complicated.  I can use simple shapes and play with layering glazes instead.  I also intend to finish my new raku kiln this spring and get that started up again.

The reality is that I needed change and I'm going to allow myself to do just that.  Sometimes we have to step out of our box or comfort zone and try new things (or revisit old things).  My resolution for 2014 is to explore.

Will you be exploring something new this year?

Diana P.
Suburban Girl Studio LLC

Carving Rubber Stamps

Back on the 18th, I took a trip to CREATE Mixed Media Retreat in Somerset, NJ with my friend Linda.  I signed up for a stamp carving class and Linda took a jewelry workshop.  I wanted to learn stamp carving with the hope that I could somehow transfer the skill to my beads and pottery.

The first thing Julie (our teacher) had us do was carve a heart.  She gave us some tips and tricks for carving curved lines.  My heart turned out okay.  I wasn't super impressed by myself but then again, it was the first stamp I had carved in a few years.

We had a full class of 24-25 students and I was the ONLY jewelry person in the bunch.  

I realized after carving the jellyfish stamp in class, that these would not be deep enough to press into the clay.  However, he would look really cute on my "thank you" tags that I send with my orders.

As you can see in the photo above, I've been playing around with some other designs.  Stamp carving is VERY addictive.

AJE contributer Karen Totten, suggested I take my carving skills and carve some stamps out of clay and bisque-fire them.  Why didn't I think of that?!? They'll be deeper and then I can press them directly into the wet clay. I'm also planning to carve more rubber stamps and then turn the prints into decals which can be fired on to my pendants.

The wheels are turning!  I feel inspired again and that makes this workshop worth every penny.

Diana P.
Suburban Girl Studio LLC