3D Stamps

In ceramics, or any other types of clay work, stamps and moulds are always a bit of a grey area. Can you use the design commercially? Do you have to give credit to the designer? Are you limited by a certain number of reproductions? It’s a minefield. So to keep things simple, I try to make my own wherever possible. 

Design Ideas

I have made moulds and stamps from all sorts of materials, clay, plaster, polymer, foam, lino, resin… they are all great ways to make your own mark and be able to reproduce it accurately.

Today, I’d like to share what I’ve been trying out to create a different kind of stamp using craft foam and fabric paint.

Craft Foam

The foam is from a craft store, sold as ready to decorate door hangers, 3 for £1 and they’re nice and thick (about 5mm)

Dimensional Fabric Paint

The paint is 3D fabric paint, this one was Tulip brand. It’s likely that other brands will give the same effect, but make sure whatever you choose has a narrow nozzle tip.

Tracing the design

For ease, I chose a design from one of my (copyright free) books and traced it in pencil on to baking parchment.

Transferring the image

The design was then transferred on to the foam by flipping the parchment and drawing over the design again

The design ready to paint

Here you can see the pencil lines transferred really well.

Painting the outline

Next, take your fabric paint and slowly and carefully draw over the pencil lines. It's tricky to get them neat, but you can tidy up any mistakes once you've covered the design.

Filling in the details

Use a paintbrush to pull out the paint for fine details. You may need to add an extra dot of paint to build up the design again. You want to try and keep the height level for a good image when you come to stamp it.

Tidying up the drips

If you accidentally splodge a bit, use a craft knife to neaten up the edge by scraping the paint back to where it should be. 

Once you’re happy with your design, leave it to dry. This paint takes 4 hours, but I left it overnight.

Using the stamp

Once they’re dry, that’s your stamp complete and ready to use. I found with the foam, I had to roll over the stamp with a rolling pin to get a deep impression, I’m going to try this on some stiff plastic for my next ones and see if that makes it a little easier to transfer the design. 

Drying out

These just need a bit of tidying up once they've firmed up a bit and I think they'll look great with a translucent glaze pooling in the design. 

The possibilities of what you can create are endless. It’s a quick and easy way to build up a good selection of unique designs!

Making Simple Polymer Clay Silhouette Stamps

I'm sure you all know about Jenny's Themed Challenge for March: the Hare. Of course I signed up right away with a mind full of new hare bead ideas… and then I ran out of time and for the reveal only had a work-in-progress to share… but now I'm finally making new beads! Thank you Jenny for a challenge that pushed me to create something new!

These first beads are one of a kind focals made with my brand new hare stamps that I made specially for the challenge. For today's post, I thought you'd enjoy a little peek into my stamp making process. And maybe you'll be inspired to make some for yourself with your own designs!

Every one of my stamp designs starts out as a simple drawing in pencil. Pencil transfers beautifully to polymer! For these little hares, I did a google search for a bit of help on hare poses (I can sculpt stylized animal shapes, but drawing isn't really my thing!) and then drew my own shapes freehand.

And here's how I turned them into stamps…

1. After drawing my designs, I shaped the stamp bases in polymer, making sure they would fit my hare designs and then I popped them into the oven to cure for 15 minutes.

2. Next I rolled a thin sheet of polymer (#4 setting on my Atlas pasta machine) and transfered my design by burnishing the back of the paper over the polymer sheet.

3. The transfered design!

4. Then I cut the design to fit my stamp base.

5. I used a small amount of liquid polymer clay to stick the design to the stamp base. Not too much or it slips around when trimming!

6. Using an X-acto knife I trimmed away the bulk of the polymer. And then with a needle, I carefully traced around the design for a closer trim.

7. Next I applied liquid polymer to edges of the design—this helps hold the design in place and softens it just enough to let me smooth the edges.

8. All smoothed and ready for baking!

With these stamps you don't need any release agent—just dip in water and stamp away! You may find that after a lot of use they start to stick to polymer—this is because raw polymer will soften baked polymer over time. I just pop the stamps in the oven with a new batch of beads every so often and they're good to go again and again.

The thing I love most about making silhouette stamps is that a simple design like this can be used to make so many different style beads and pendants! 

I don't know why really, but I just adore jackalopes! These are still raw—once baked, I'll add some washes to give them a more rustic feel.

And of course, I had to make lunar hares! I used another stamp for the moon motif and a wild grass impression. These too will get some paint washes.

Lots of painting will be happening this weekend and hopefully the new focals will hop into my shop later next week! :-)

Wishing you all a very creative weekend!

Rebekah Payne

Tree Wings Studio

Blog: treewingsstudio.com

Shop: treewingsstudio.etsy.com

20 minute moulds

 Whenever I’m brainstorming for new ideas, it seems that I usually need to make a mould. Being incredibly impatient, the thought of getting out plaster, mixing and waiting days for it to dry really doesn’t appeal to me. I’ll do it, but only if I can’t find a quicker way of getting the result I want. 

In my mould collection I have loads of rtv silicon moulds, looking for some seasonal ideas. I pulled out one full of snowflakes. It has some lovely designs, but they are so detailed and close together, it’s difficult to press the clay in and get a good impression. I also wanted to be able to stamp the design so that a cavity was left in the clay rather than a raised impression. This way if I used a coloured transparent glaze, it would pool in the recess and show the pattern.

I needed to make a reverse mould. If you want to try this yourself, you will need some rapid set resin, scales or measuring cups, a wooden stirrer, nitrile gloves (resin can melt vinyl or latex gloves), and an empty syringe. 

To start, make sure your mould is clean and dry. This one is made from silicon. This technique might work with other types of mould, but do a test on the edge first, there’s a chance that the resin will stick and ruin it.

Put your gloves on and measure the resin following the instructions. Mine is 50/50 so I added equal amounts in weight, then stirred with the wooden lollipop stick. You need to make sure you do this gently but thoroughly so that both parts are well combined, but you don’t add any air bubbles. You also need to be fairly quick. The resin has a 5 minute pot time and after this will start to cure. For small projects like this one, I usually only mix about 10 grams at a time.

Fill the syringe with the mixed resin and put a couple of drops in to the mould. Using the wooden stirrer, poke the resin in to all of the gaps in the cavity and then continue to fill until the resin covers the whole of the pattern. 

In a couple of minutes, the resin will start to change colour as it cures. 

After 15 minutes, they are ready to remove.

You can use them straight away. Just roll out some clay and stamp them on. If you find them a bit fiddly to use like this, you can make a handle from a cork and glue the resin casting on to the end.
I'm going to make these into individual moulds that I can use more easily. To do this, I've pressed them in to polymer clay and baked them. I now have an inny and an outy design for each snowflake.

There would have been a picture of the finished fired and glazed charms here, but due to an unfortunate incident with my cat being accidentally locked in the studio overnight, I’m afraid I have nothing to show… they would have been lovely!

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