Squid!

I believe it is, I do indeed.

I accidentally made a squid today. So here it is.

This last picture is of it before baking, all propped up on foil to keep the tentacles from falling.

I used the probably-no-longer-available SuperFlex Sculpey for it, a blend of the blue and the green. The body is one lump, the fins are pinched out and shaped a little. The tentacles were rolled out of scrap and smoothed onto the body and sealed between them all with a little more scrap. The pads on the two longest are teardrop shapes smoothed on.

Clay Prep and Bowl Making

ZOMG GUYS HAPPY NEW YEAR ZOMG

Yeah, more bowls. :D

Dealing with aged polymer clay, specifically Sculpey and Sculpey III

• Break into small pieces. The smaller they are, the less the next step hurts
• Mush the small pieces together until they stick. This step will make them even smaller than they already are before they start sticking. This can take up to twenty minutes for a smallish fist sized pile of bits.
• To help with the sticking, you may wish to add a dab (no more than a dab and you may wish to leave the b off) of olive oil. Since olive oil does go rancid, it’s best to use clay prepared with it in the near future
• Roll the lump of clay into a log. This is harder than it sounds, because the lump will fall apart before you get it rolled.
• Roll the log, folding as necessary, into a log until it stays together. It will have a tendency to peel apart the long way. Let it and stick the smooth sides together. This can 10 minutes.
• Check for air bubbles just under the skin. Put a pin through any that you find. Roll the log a few times to get new air bubbles up to the surface. Repeat until you get bored. Removing air bubbles makes the clay better quality clay which is why you don’t do this with clay that is usable because this introduces air bubbles (but also makes the clay usable, so deal :P)
• Make that thing you were going to make.

How to make those bowls I make

• Roll about a third of a fist sized lump of clay into a ball. Any size works but that size produces a bowl about <a href=”http://penguiniandcompany.wordpress.com/2010/12/24/bowls/”>this</a> size (about 2.5 inches in diameter and 1 inch deep with 1/8 inch thick walls).
• Poke a hole down through the center, leaving about 1/4 inch to the other side with the handle of your knife, favorite tool, paintbrush, or pencil.
• roll the ball around on the end of the pencil until it’s more of a cylinder.
• Pinch, poke, and prod the cylinder into the desired bowl shape.

This process can be hijacked at the 3rd step and turned into a vase, a balloon, and other wonderful stuff.

Swirled Egg

This is why I made the shells found Over Here.

I use them as bases to make strangely patterned (but not yet textured) eggs out of polymer clay. This one is from my swirly phase (quite a while ago, at this point) and only recently got finished after I bought varnish, sanded it properly, and made a varnishing stand for it.

The process to make one of these is pretty simple- get some idea of what you want the egg to look like, execute it, sand the living daylights out of it, varnish, and wander around looking for someone to show/sell it to.

My idea for this one came from a pen and ink drawing I did several months before that I thought would adapt well to being round. And digitized too, since I can no longer find the original scan. Executing the idea was the hardest part simply because of the amount of detail. The clay had to be rolled to about 1/8th inch thick, cut into very thin strip in some cases, and then stuck together on an egg. Then the egg is baked according to package instructions, ignored in the bottom of a box (these are pretty fragile) for a month or so, then sanded. Polymer clay has to be wet sanded, which just means that it has to be sanded in or under water, otherwise the sandpaper will clog up. It /really helps/ if you have sandpaper that doesn’t come apart when it gets wet, but if you don’t, no worries. Start with a fairly coarse grit (I’d say about twice a coarse as a new emery board) and work your way down to crocus paper (the finest sandpaper available). My crocus paper comes apart in water so I wound up using the grit and the end of my finger to sand the egg instead. That left the egg a horrible red color, but very very smooth. To get the red stain off, I used an old toothbrush and new toothpaste (a very light abrasive) to get the red out. Then I washed it off, dried it out, bent up a stand out of 10 gauge copper wire, varnished it (try not to let it drip like I did, it looks bad), and left it sitting on my desk for lack of anything better to do. I might make a real stand for it some day.

This is before I varnished it.

And this is after. I like the shiny!

I use Sculpey polymer clay and PLAID outdoor satin sealer (polyurethane).

Shiny Blue Bowl

One standard teacup formed composite bowl done up in pretty paints and sealed for it’s protection, not yours.

The blue on the near side is the closest to the real color. In the sun it is absolutely brilliant. I did not expect the blue/silver mix to work out so well.

This time, the far side is closest to reality. This is the same blue as before not-really-mixed with white and silver in equal parts and brushed on. It’s a variation on a technique used to make real clay look like stone. Sort of.

The yellow and gold clays are a lot brighter in real life. Those are a part of the bowl, rather than an inlay or painted like the rest of the bowl. I originally intended to paint the whole bowl but the effect was too cool to pass up.

I fully expect you to all flip when I say that I’m going to use this to replace the experiment that my previous retainer dish has turned into.