Art Jewelry Elements: Making An Impression

Friday, April 11, 2014

Making An Impression

Lately I've been experimenting with different ways to make impressions in polymer clay. Let me show you what I've been up to.

I've been going through my collection of stamps to see which ones could be useful with polymer clay. Originally I'd put that Christmas ornament stamp (top, left) with the "not useful" stamps. The ornament was too large for a pendant and besides, I didn't really care for it either. When I took a second look at the stamp this week, it occurred to me that its not necessary to use the whole stamp. I realized that parts of the stamp could make very attractive components. See the checkerboard pattern at the top and bottom of the stamp? I made an earring pair with that pattern, (top right). Next winter, I'll use the snowflake in the center for earring charms.

I had 2 rectangular stamps, one of which made the pendant in the second picture and another which is shown in the bottom pair of pictures. I didn't have any circle cutters that were small enough to make earring charms, so I used the cap from a highlighter pen. It was a bit difficult to get the cap to release the clay, but I managed.

I've found that a cutting mat helps me to make nice straight cuts. All I have to do is line up my tissue blade with the lines. Sometimes a more organic shape is called for, in which case such precision is unnecessary.

When I was wandering around Michaels awhile ago, I came across these inexpensive textured foam squares in the children's craft section. I haven't tried them yet, but I'm thinking that they will be a fun way to texture the polymer clay.

I didn't have any of the scratch foam that several of our AJE team have written about, so I tried using a foam meat tray. I tried different tools for carving it and had the best luck using the tip of a pair of chopsticks (above, left). It works, but is not easy to do. I found it worked best with simple designs. It wasn't possible to do any detail work on the foam. I think I'll have to investigate the actual scratch board.

The top right was just an experiment. I cut out holes in the green clay using the end of a cut down straw. Then I cut the same sized holes in purple polymer clay and inserted the purple into the green. It wasn't difficult and although this pendant is not great looking, I can imagine possibilities for using this technique in more sophisticated ways. I cut this piece out with the clear plastic lid that you see to the left of the pendant. Somehow air got trapped inside the cap when I pressed it down into the clay. As soon as I let go of it, it made a loud POP and it sprung up into the air! Caught me by surprise for sure!!!

The bottom left picture shows all the items I made in this session, except the cut-out pendant.

At the time of this writing, I haven't finished painting all the cured pieces. However, I can give you a sneak peek of the rustic pendant I made with the meat tray foam. I'll be back here in 2 weeks to show how all components turned out after painting.