Your Voting Reminder and a Prelude to Upcoming News

Well, I've done it again and delayed my reminder post until the day before the last! Yes, voting is open and will only be open through tomorrow (ends at midnight EST on the 7th) But hey, I remembered, even if it's a last minute effort! ;)

Check out this wonderful graphic created by Marie Young of Marie Young Creative - it features Marie's wonderful foxy sculpture that she made for this challenge:

So, please do, if you haven't already, Go Vote! But wait!... before you do, I have some upcoming news about new projects and directions I plan to take Create My World Designs in the coming year and beyond. I have too little time today to write about it, so I will try to get a post written this weekend or at least by sometime next week! If you're a fan of mine on Facebook you might have noticed a hint of this in some new etsy listings and a project that I worked on for a friend (which I'll be sure to show off in the next post!)... so check back in a week or so, to get the full scoop!  Okay, now, Go Vote! Please and Thank you! ;)

Funny Bones (and how to permanently mend broken polymer pieces with a cast)

The February challenge theme for my guild is Masks. This was one of the themes which I had suggested to the guild when we were posting ideas, at our forum, for challenge themes. Back then I had envisioned making a beautiful mask, covered with either polymer leaves or feathers and possibly an asymmetrical  design with lots of swirls... but as often happens, the stray inspiration of an object, on which to build my mask, took over and my original beautiful vision was left behind in the dust.

"Why give up on the beautiful mask idea? What object could have made me abandon my original idea to create this creepy thing?", you may ask. I always try to be a couple months ahead in my planning/idea stage for the challenges, so this all happened after Thanksgiving dinner when I saw the bones from the turkey. I think I've mentioned on this blog before that I'm a vegetarian, but we do get a humane organic turkey, from a local farm, on Thanksgiving to share with our guests who are not vegetarian. So, after the Thanksgiving meal, as I was cleaning up the kitchen I saw the unique shape of the breast bone and immediately saw a face in it, which hijacked my mask idea from my beautiful mask plans to something creepy-funny-wierd.

Here's the inspiration that I couldn't ignore:

You can see where I saw the nose. The side bones were too close and lined up over my eyes, so these I cut off and then angled out to the sides. The entire piece was covered with a thin layer of white polymer which I texturized around the "face". I knew the mask would be too heavy to be held in place by some sort of tied band at the back of the head; and I didn't want the wearer to be encumbered by upholding the mask with a stick. So I came up with the idea of a bridge spanning over the top of the head.

The armature for the head band was added by drilling a hole into the top area of the "nose" through which a wire was fed. The wire was doubled up and curved over the crown of my head. I then covered the head band wire armature with aluminum foil to make a thicker armature. This was covered with white polymer. Unfortunately, while I was handling the piece firmly, the side bone areas on the face broke off, even though they were covered with clay and cured, I'm guessing this is because I put too much force on those areas, plus the armature of that area was thin turkey bones which are quite brittle. I glued them back and covered with another layer of thin clay and the entire piece went through a second cure.

After the second cure, I added wire armature for the spider-like arms at the top of the head, and once again the side face bones broke. So I devised a method, that is similar to making a cast, to secure them. After curing my cast method, I had no further breaking problems even when I put force on the appendages. I also decided to treat the upper head "arms" to the cast treatment to ensure no breakage with those wired armature appendages. I photographed the process and will share here what I did:

So, if you have a piece that keeps breaking, how do you fix it, to prevent it from breaking again? First, using a strong glue (I used super glue), glue the piece back in place. Then, take a thin sheet of something porous (thin fabric would work, but I used a spent dryer sheet).  Cut a strip of your fabric or dryer sheet and saturate it with liquid sculpey or bake 'n bond. Adhere the soaked strip to the area around the break (see bottom left image), wrapping the area a couple times to ensure a strong cast. Then using a heat tool, cure the cast (you may have to hold the end of the strip in place with a needle tool until the heat fully cures the liquid clay). Add a layer of bonding agent and cover with a thin layer of the original polymer color and smooth or texturize as desired. Fully cure in oven at temperature suggested on polymer packaging.

After the breakages were finally resolved with their cast fixes, and the upper antenna arms were reinforced with a cast, I decided to add spiked horns to the band across the head. The armature for the spikes were the wooden rods of spent Q-tips which I had saved to upcycle. I drilled holes into the band and glued the wooden rods into the holes. Then I covered them with white clay and twisted them up to create the horns you see. Back into the oven everything went for a third curing.

The last thing I decided to add were the armored plates on the headband and the rings surrounding the horns. I decided these plates would finish off the headband well and would not demand a lot of time (something of which I'm always in short supply while creating challenge pieces!). After these additions were made and a final curing, the entire piece was treated to an antiquing with a burnt umber oil paint and then heat set. 

While it was indeed fun to just let the piece create itself from the initial base material, this is so far beyond my typical style! Whenever I put it on my face though, it just makes me giggle cause it's so silly to me. I'm sure someone somewhere would like this mask, but it's definitely not for me. I may make some more changes to it and I am considering listing it in my etsy shop. I'm a bit wary of listing this piece only because I'm not certain it would fit the face of everyone (since it was basically custom fit to my face). It does look kind-of cool just sitting on a table though, perhaps for someone who likes creepy weird items to decorate...  I may still add some things to it and am considering adding another layer of antiquing in black to give more depth and interest. What do you think of my creepy mask? Would you have guessed that it was built upon the breast bone of a turkey? Leave me a comment below and tell me your thoughts!

This challenge vote will open on February 1st. I'll be sure to post here a reminder when the voting is open!

Swapping ornaments

This past December, I participated in my guild's Ornament swap for the first time. I made 3 ornaments which I sent to 3 of my guild mates and, in exchange, 3 other guild mates sent me ornaments. It was great fun and I plan to participate in these much more often! Because I was working on documenting the process of my polymer quilling filigree technique (in hopes to have it published), I decided to create these ornaments in that technique.

(front side)

(back side)

These ornaments were built upon a brass ring (with the chain and clip that you see attached), which I believe was meant to be a curtain ring. The red ornament is slightly different because it was created first, and all the "kinks" were figured out with this one... I think it has a more whimsical look, as the filigree isn't as fluid as the other two, because it was formed in a slightly different manner, but I still love it! The front side of each ornament has the name of the recipient scripted in the center. And the back sides have my little "Create My World Designs" logo stamped in the center with added appliquéd and embossed dots.

The ornaments I received are these wonderful beauties:

The glass heart with appliquéd flowers on the left is from Linda Riopel of NKDesigns, the center Joy ornaments are from Becky Sue Mizell of Becky Sue Creations, and the whimsical tree bell on the right is from Arlene Harrison of Ashpaints (Harrison Hollow Designs).

This was such a fun experience! I look forward to more swaps in the future! Have you participated in swaps? Do you know of any swaps that I should know about? Tell me about it in the comments!

Voting Time! January 2015 Illuminated Challenge

Go to the PCAGOE blog to cast your vote! Three voters are randomly chosen each month to win a prize! Voting closes at midnight on January 7th, 2015!  

Thanks to Marie Young of Marie Young Creative for the image above.

Happy, Shiny Christmas Tree!

I'm an "in the moment, season-to-season" kind of girl. It's rare for me to rush any season by wishing for the next one. This has good points and bad. The good is that I am enjoying the moment. The bad is that when all the business-minded artists and crafters are creating items to sell a season ahead of time, I'm living in the moment and my creations celebrate the season at hand... when fall arrives I'm inspired to make fall items, when the winter holidays are upon us, I'm compelled to create Christmas items. So, while this challenge piece is for the January 2015 challenge, I'm still in Christmas creating mode. This month for my guild, the PCAGOE, our theme is "Illuminated" (any item that is lit by a light or candle).

As happens fairly often, the piece I chose to create was based upon an item I found at my local thrift store. I found this hinged, wire, pyramidal shape that I imagine was supposed to be a sort of abstract Christmas tree. I decided this would be a great little piece to turn into a polymer Christmas tree light. I wish I had taken a before photo of the frame, but it is still exposed on the inside, so you can get an idea from this:

I began by creating flat slabs of translucent Premo in the shape of each side of the pyramid top and base. After these were cured, I glued them onto the frame and sealed the seams with bonding agent and more translucent polymer to smooth out the corners. The entire piece went in for the second curing. Unfortunately, I wasn't thinking about the polymer + heat + gravity factor and did not give it any extra support on the outsides. For those who are not familiar with curing polymer: while fully cured and cooled polymer is extremely durable, if one does not give support to 3 dimensional objects during the heat process, the heat and gravity can make the polymer break or crack when it's in the oven. If a piece is properly supported, this does not happen... proper support seems to be a lesson I am destined to re-learn often! While the frame was there for support on the inside, it was only attached to the outer edges of the frame. With the piece sitting on one of it's sides in the oven, 2 of the side pieces were pulled downward by gravity, resulting in cracked pieces. Because nearly each piece I make is a new and unique idea, there's almost always a learning curve filled with accidents. In this case, I patched it back up with bonding agent and more translucent polymer, cured it and decided to move onward. One of the things I love about this medium is that you can almost always fix problems that may arise. But, because of the patched cracks, I now needed a surface treatment that would hide the patch (originally I had intended to stain the polymer with inks, sort-of like a watercolor painting)....

A while ago, I had the idea to use Ginger Allman's (of The Blue Bottle Tree) Holo effect to create the illusion of facets on a diamond shape (right after I created my Diamond in the Rough container). At that time, I purchased the tutorial from Ginger and put the idea aside for a while. I still have yet to recreate that diamond project using the hollo effect technique, if you follow this blog, you know how rare it is for me to revisit an old project. So, as I was considering what surface treatment to use for this piece, my eyes glanced upon the materials I had purchased for Ginger's Holo effect and that serendipitous moment decided the outcome of this piece. I set to work and finished the outside of the top with a green holo effect and the base with a golden holo effect. I didn't give any texture, as Ginger does to her pieces; I kept it flat because I wanted to see how this technique might be used to create that previous faceted diamond idea, for which I would also want no texture.  Here's a close-up of the tree, so you can better see the holo effect's iridescent shine:

After the holo surface was cured, I covered the corners and edges with strips of raw polymer and bonding agent. After this was cured, next came the dilemma of how to decorate the tree. I decided upon extruded strands that curl and meander around the tree, with multicolored light bulbs reminiscent of C7 bulbs. The base decoration became an extruded, curly and meandering strand of Premo red sparkle clay. I also made a little star to sit atop the tree. This star was also treated to the gold holo effect and it is outlined in gold and sparkle red polymer. It is removable, held to the top of the tree with 2 strong magnets. I did this specifically to avoid having the star bend or break during storage.

As always the process of bringing the concept of this piece to a final product was enjoyable, even with the frustration of the start. I'm especially happy with the holo effect, it reminds me of iridescent dichroic glass, so bright and shiny... such a happy little tree. Oh speaking of "little", the dimensions are 10.5" (from the tip of the star to the base) and 4.5" at the widest point of the base. I wish I had been able to take more time to do this project, to refine things, but I'm in the middle of another big project plus the preparation for the holidays, so this one got more rushed than I would have liked. But overall, I'm quite pleased. If you're intrigued by the holo effect, I highly recommend Ginger's tutorial, she explains everything in thorough detailed description and photos.

I'd love to hear what you think of my little, happy, shiny tree... leave me a comment below!
Whatever holiday you may celebrate this season, I extend warm wishes for a happy holiday.. and cheers to a healthy 2015! The voting for this challenge will begin on New Year's Day and will be open until midnight on the 7th. I'll post a reminder here when voting is open!

Time to Vote!

There are 2 more days left to cast your vote for the December 2014 Carving Challenge! Head over to the PCAGOE blog and choose your 3 favorite entries! Three lucky winners are chosen every month to win a prize, one of them could be you!  **Thanks to Marie Young of Marie Young Creative for the image used above**

Carving up more than the Thanksgiving turkey!

The theme for the December 2014 challenge for the PCAGOE (Polymer Clay Artists Guild of Etsy) is "Carved". I had been wanting to try my hand at carving for a while, so even though I'm quite busy right now with various other projects, I couldn't let this challenge slip by without giving it a try.

I've been having a lot of fun doing larger scale items, moving away from jewelry design. I will eventually go back to Jewelry (I think), but I'm having so much fun working larger with home decor and sculptural items. So, when my thoughts turned to this challenge I immediately was thinking on the larger scale. Then one night when I was in my creative brainstorming time (just before falling asleep) I struck upon the idea of using up all the cured polymer scraps that I had sitting around. These are pieces that were made and after curing either weren't strong enough (pieces that broke during finishing or jewelry assembly), pieces that burned during curing or were experiments that didn't turn out well. I have a lot of these scraps, to give you an idea, here's my box 'o scraps:

I got the idea to make a kind-of polymer soup, mixing these cured scraps with some liquid bonding agent (Bake 'n Bond). But, "what to cure it in?", was the big question. I needed something that the polymer wouldn't adhere to or be tough to remove. So I thought of silicon bakeware. Luckily, my local thrift stores usually have a piece or two of silicon bakeware, so off to the thrift I went. I found what I can only describe as what looks like a gravy boat, all in silicon, and it was only $1! Perfect!! I brought it home and set it in my studio. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that its original owner was a heavy smoker, the next day, as I began working on my other project (with the silicon mold sitting next to my workspace) it literally began making me sick! My sinuses dried up and my nose became stuffy. Whenever I left the room for a decent chunk of time, the stuffiness subsided. I kept getting the hint of stale smoke, but couldn't figure out from where it was coming! I finally realized it was the silicon piece, so I soaked it in a bath of bleach water for 24 hours. The smell still wasn't removed, but it did lessen it. 

In the meantime, I decided to try a practice carve, using the tools I use for wood-cut printing to carve my polymer. I had a business card case which I had decorated with a polymer slab, but then decided I didn't like it. When I tried to remove the polymer, the superglue had other ideas, and the polymer came off in tiny bits leaving big bits behind. I decided this would be my trial piece. I carved into the polymer pieces left behind and then coated it with black LPC before curing. A coating of resin, some sprinkles of glitter and another coating of resin, and here's my practice piece: 

Kind of funky and interesting, so I kept it and added some black liquid pc leaving areas of the bare metal uncovered, added a touch of glitter and two coats of resin. I intentionally added scratches all over the metal case to add to the primitive feel of this piece. I'm not quite sure if it's finished yet, I'll have to give it more consideration.

So, trial carving out of the way, it was time to get down to the business of my challenge project. I made a thick soup of some of the broken bits of cured polymer and the Bake 'n Bond. The uncured raw "soup" looked like this:

I made sure that all bits of cured clay were covered and I kept some bits of the cured clay peeking out of the top. In it went, to be cured for almost an hour. When it came out, it looked like this:

I decided to cut it in half, so that the sculpture could stand on its own. I was going to use a saw for this, but decided to just use an old tissue blade to saw through the cured clay. That worked surprisingly well. Then, time to sand! I needed to sand the two newly formed bases, as the cut wasn't as even as it might have been had I used a saw. Plus, I wanted the rounded, moulded sides to be finished to shiny perfection. So I sanded through many grades of micro mesh and then buffed with my buffer/grinder.

Now I was ready to begin the carving. I started first by hand drilling circles with the flat v shaped carving tool. Next I mapped out where I wanted spiral shapes to be added, by drawing them with a sharpie marker. Tip: If you've never worked with carving tools, when you are trying to carve a continuous line, it helps to first draw outlines with a straight carving tool, then go back and carve out the inside with either the v-shaped carver or the c-shaped carvers. This rule holds true for wood cuts as well as carving polymer. Even when one takes the time to cut an outline the gauging blades still can slip if given too much force, and that will either scratch the piece or skid across and slice one's hand (ask me how I know this). Three V shaped cuts in my left thumb plus a bandaid later, I had both pieces carved to my satisfaction.

I decided to paint the carved out areas with black acrylic, to make them stand out against the background. I really like how these two pieces can be arranged in different ways, according to one's preference, which could change daily! ;)

Finally, here's a shot from the side, so you can see how deep the clay is, and how the carved side has edges of the scraps that pop out of it:

I had a lot of fun with this challenge. While I like carving a lot, the part I had the most fun with was using up old failures and upcycling them into a new piece! My inner enviro-girl was quite happy about that! ;) I still have lots of scraps in my box 'o scraps, so I plan to do more of this scrap soup making in the future!

Voting for this challenge will open on December 1st, and will run through midnight December 7th. Remember 3 randomly chosen lucky voters win a prize every month! I'll try to remember to post a voting reminder here!

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this project, and on my carved primitive card case too, please leave me a comment and tell me what you think!

November Vote!

Time to Vote again! Go to the PCAGOE blog to cast your vote at this link.  Remember, 3 lucky voters win a prize every month! Thanks to Marie Young of Young Creative for the promo photo posted above!

Meditative Repetition

My guild's challenge theme for November is Mandalas. The word mandala comes from Sanskrit; translated it means circle. Mandalas are spiritual symbols which represent the universe. It's no wonder that working on creating my own mandala would become a meditative task. I simply got lost in the repetitive details as I was creating this piece. I found myself not wanting the session to end as I kept adding more to it.

The basic concept I wanted for this design was based on layering. As for color scheme and motifs, I decided to celebrate my favorite season of the year, autumn. I chose the fall color palette of red, orange, gold, green and brown, incorporating motifs of leaves.

To begin, there is a base layer of golden red and orange on the outer perimeter of the main circle. Over this I strung 8 pieces of string that had been dipped in polymer and dyed with alcohol ink, all spaced at equal distances (these would become the center veins of one round of leaves). The yellow gold color was next as I cut out shapes of leaves around the center and small four lobed flowers near the edges of the circle. The next layer proved most difficult, to cut away enough to see the under layer of cut out shaped leaves in the gold layer, plus, adding the maple leaf cut outs, the fancy border and a slightly larger four lobed flower motif to reveal the smaller flower motif on the gold layer. In the next steps details were added with tiny bits of clay and the use of small tools to make indentations.

I suddenly decided that I didn't want this to be just a plain edged circle, mostly because I was having so much fun adding things to it... and that's when I chose to add leaf shapes surrounding the existing circular canvas. Sticking with the same color palette and motifs, I added larger green leaves and smaller golden red leaves, detailed with bits of golden yellow and orange flowers. The entire outer band of design is wrapped with a thin gauge strip of the brown.

I seriously think I could have worked on this for much longer, but wanted to wrap things up in time for the weekend, so it didn't cut into my precious time with my dear hubby. ;) This color scheme was a bit of a step-out for me, though I love the colors of fall, I tend to shy away from using green and yellow, especially together, and especially both with brown!

I could definitely get lost in doing a series of these, and might have to revisit this idea at a later date. I had originally thought that this little piece (it's just shy of 8" in diameter so, not as large as the wall hangings I've done before) wasn't one that really fit into any of the already existing decor in my home. I had resigned myself to selling it... but, I took a chance and hung it next to the other 2 round wall hangings I made in the past year, which live on my studio wall. I think he looks happy there... I envision an entire wall filled with these circular creations... someday. For now, this is a start:

I would love to hear any comments you might have to share on mandalas. Have you experienced the meditative zone of working with repetition? Tell me about it in the comments and be sure to let me know what you think of my little mandala!

Voting for this challenge will begin on November 1st and will go through the 7th at midnight EST. As always, I'll try to post a voting reminder here on the blog with the link!

October Vote!

Voting is open until midnight EST October 7th! Go to the PCAGOE blog to vote for your 3 favorite entries and you could win a prize (3 lucky voters are randomly chosen to win a prize every month)!!