A Walking Polymer Advertisement

Text or Letters. There are so many ways to use them to create art. The September Polymer Clay Guild of Etsy challenge theme is just that: Fun with ABCs, basing your art around letters or words. I had so many ideas floating around in my head for this challenge. But, as the month of August marched on, I found myself with limited time to create. Then, the recurrence of a health issue for a family member meant I wouldn't even have time to be in my studio, so I had to come up with something that would be portable, which meant limited supplies. Hmm, this meant no pasta machine or needing to juggle sharp blades... which for my mind, spelled out using paintbrushes and liquid polymer. That thought was when my final inspiration struck!

I had purchased some very inexpensive T-shirts which I wanted to decorate with polymer, you may remember my previous polymer decorated T-shirt which you can find here. But this time, I wanted the design to be more contiguous, which meant that I needed the polymer to be super flexible, as a t-shirt decal would be. I could have tried straight liquid polymer, but I knew that would result in a stiffer (more uncomfortable) product, so I came up with a concoction of liquid polymer plus 2 additives. The cured texture of this mixture is more like a rubbery latex material and it flexes beautifully with the fabric! The only problem is that when too much of one of the ingredients is added it creates a gummy, gooey blob. And when too much of the other ingredient is added it created a smoother product, but one which didn't cure fully. So, it required a lot of patience and trial and error. I am not revealing my concoction yet, because I feel it is not perfected. I do have some ideas of how to make it even better, which I want to explore before I reveal my mad scientist experimentation results.

So, I set to work and created a T-shirt painted with my business logo. The front was bedecked with the chosen font of my business name logo, and on the back of the T-shirt, I tried my best to simplify and capture (in painted polymer) my polymer quilled globe design (which has become my business logo - see the header of the blog above), plus the text of the web address of this blog.

Unfortunately, time was running low and when it was time to paint the inside of the continents (the very last thing I did), I was left with the choice of letting them go unpainted, or painting them with a combination of straight liquid polymer from 2 different brands. As I had predicted, the result of the straight LPC, without my secret additives, was a stiff texture. Luckily, these are such small areas, that it will not detract from the comfort of the T-shirt. Unfortunately too, I was unable to add the scrolled faux quilled design to the interior of the continents, due to lack of time.

All-in-all, I'm happy with the results of my experimentation and my new walking advertisement for my business! As I alluded, I am wanting to experiment further with this idea, and have a stack of T-shirts piled up, waiting to be decorated. When I get the combination adjusted to a well workable, curable and predictable mixture, I'll be ready to share my experimentation and results, possibly in the form of a tutorial. Thanks for stopping by my blog to check out my logo T-shirt project! I'd love to hear your thoughts on this piece, please consider leaving me a comment below! Voting opens for this PCAGOE challenge on September 1st and will run through the 7th at midnight EST. I'll try to post a reminder here, when voting is open.

My Polymer Quilling Article Published in The Polymer Arts Spring 2015 Issue!

Now that the spring 2015 Diversity issue of The Polymer Arts magazine was released today, I am thrilled to share that I've been published again! For this publication, I wrote a tutorial-type article detailing my tips and tricks for polymer quilling. The digital issue was sent out to subscribers today and the print issues should be arriving in the mail to subscribers very soon! Here's a peek at the cover photo and my article pages:

I'm including below, a gallery of the pieces which are included in the article; all of which were created during the documentation of the various methods that I found for creating this look. Though they are not included in the article, you might remember my 2 other quilled polymer pieces, my Creation Story Turtle Wallhanging and my most recent challenge piece, the Once Upon a Time book cover which you can see at those corresponding links.

The main project I created for this article was the piece that you can clearly see on the first page of the article above. This piece was designed to become my new logo for Create My World Designs which you can see (without the polymer quilled font over top) in my new banner above! The addition of the polymer quilled font was made for my profile photo on the Create My World Designs Facebook page. Here are large photos of that piece, both with and without the font:

Other pieces created during the writing of the article were this bunch of Christmas ornaments, 3 snowflakes which were made for my guild swap, an upcycled lightbulb covered in polymer with quilled polymer spirals and a freeform polymer filigree which was mounted to a satin covered styrofoam ornament accented with beads:

And finally these 2 pair of earrings were created while working out best practices for polymer quilling:

I am once again, over-the-moon happy to have an article published in one of my favorite periodicals! You can read the article and learn all about my methods to create polymer quilling by purchasing the issue or subscribing to The Polymer Arts at their website.  Many Thanks to Sage Bray (editor) and The Polymer Arts staff for the opportunity to be included in this publication! If you missed the other 2 places I've been published, they are: the Summer 2012 Recycle & Reuse issue of The Polymer Arts, which I wrote about here and the book Art Without Waste by Patty Wongpakdee which I wrote about here. If you subscribe to The Polymer Arts and have the opportunity to read my article, I'd love to hear your comments! I'd love to hear what you think of my new logo too! Post your thoughts below!