Dragonflies and Butterflies

Am having a good response to these crackled resin and polymer clay insects to which I'm adding a little hardware or watch gears. Am having a lot of fun with making dragonflies and butterflies, arranging them on barrettes, as pins, earrings and pendants. Right now the barrettes are in the oven as I decided to attach the metal clips with clay strips. The 2 part epoxy I had applied yesterday...they just snapped off when I pried them. Perhaps I wasn't totally accurate with the mixing of hardener and resin. As I mentioned before I have a hard time with 'measuring', lol.

 

  

 

Polymer Clay and Resin play

I've tinkered with various types of resins for my polymer clay jewelry and until now have not found the right product for me. I've tried Envirotex and some other 2 part resin that my husband likes to use and while he is very good at mixing 2 part resins, I am not. I think my equal measuring with specific cups is not working out too well, but apparently temperature is a factor also. I've ended up with sticky pieces that ended up in the garbage bin and was not too pleased because I didn't do it on a 'test' piece, ahem. No wonder I didn't do so well in High School Chemistry, lol. I've tried Judikins Diamond Glaze and DG3 Art gel and Glossy Accents which are dimensional glosses. Since they are water-based however they do not stand up to a lot of wear. I've tried UTEE and I do like it for 'round' objects, but for tougher wear I need something stronger.

Most of you know about the 1 part resin, Magic Glos, by Lisa Pavelka. I like it a lot, but it is a bit pricey. I'm glad it is available in larger bottles now which does bring cost down. It cures wonderfully under my 9 Watt UV lamp, but I find I have to do two steps and sometimes two layers to get it right. You can see my post about it here
About lamps...I just ordered a larger lamp, a 36 Watt one like this one. I'll be able to cure more pendants at a time (instead of 2 or 3) and with a quicker cure time.

Anyway...last year I had some UV resin sent to me by a manufacturer in the US. I'll have to dig out the flyer and info they sent me and tell you more about who, where and what, but I finally used it and WOW! am I happy I did. If you saw my last post you saw one of the pieces I did with this.
Here are a few more pics

 

This stuff, which is an Epoxy, cures relatively fast, about the same time as Magic Glos. What I do is a thin layer at first, cure and do another layer. What I found so far is that:

• it does not recede from the edge
• after curing it can be baked (if you need to add to your piece)
• it can be sanded (and I've got to do a bit of that)

Ancient World meets Future - Myriad Polymer Clay Pendants

While working on these polymer clay somethings, including some spirals (not shown), the first thought that came to mind was Archimedes. I was looking for a name for these pendants to be and had to ponder why that word would jump out like that.

Archimedes was a Greek astronomer, inventor, engineer, physicist, and mathematician.

The watch gears hint of steampunk, and yet the pendants don't look anywhere near Victorian which is a major criteria for something to fit into the Steampunk genre. I know that a lot of people stick some gears and bolts in some clay and call it Steampunk, however, true Steampunk does not contain an iota of plastics, only metal, glass, leather or the kinds of things that were around in the Victorian Era. And frankly, polymer clay or PVC was not invented until 1933 in Germany by Semon B.F. Goodrich. Check out this interesting time-line of polymers.

So what do I call my pieces that are more inspired by 'Ancient World meets Future' along with gears, nuts and bolts, resin, inks of the now...I was trying to guess how many pendants I have created since I started claying, beading etc and a wild guess would be in the thousands. 10,000 is a Myriad in Greek...A Myriad of Polymer Clay Pendants, or just a few.
Stay tuned...I'll be blogging about a wonderful new component resin.

V Day!

A visit from my friend Vanessa made this rainy day much more fun than it would have been. Coming up to Tofino is a more than 3 hour long drive (not counting the drive back!), so V as I like to call Vanessa, was a real Sport when I suggested we experiment with a little polymer clay. I wanted to try a hidden magic mokume gane thing that I saw on Parole de Pate (Feb2008), but with a slight difference, by adding a sheet of translucent with pinata inks and another one translucent with painted gold leaf sandwiched in between. The result wasn't quite what I imagined or had hoped for, but am happy nonetheless. The result was an 'aha' moment because now I now what to try next....a thicker version for more depth.
Thanks for a great visit V!

A lot of green...(that table cloth must go....I don't like gingham)

V's sheet which reminded me of some ancient script....

Goofin' around, lol.
Finished one project...