Bronze jelly

Bronze jelly
Originally uploaded by Zoeowyn

Ive been playing with bronzclay lately. Now that Im using Paste Maker instead of water its not giving me the fits it used to before I switched over to copper. I thought I may have switched over to copper for good, I mean I still have 500 grams of it waiting to be used. Yes 500 grams. I apparently bought 2 200 gram packs a while ago.

Im going to finish up this pack of bronze, then switch over to copper for a bit. Im looking forward to making copper jellies soon.

Whats on the bench?

Finished this lovely piece today.

Oh and I got a nice big piece of my table cleaned off!

Loki Helmet Molding

I was given the challenge of making a Loki tag. I though for certain I would do an easy tear away. Mold on the helmet. 

That was a mess, never did work. I ended up sculpting the helmet. Of course I cant sculpt tiny, so I did a shrink process with Bronzclay. Basically that means make it, mold it, cast it, fire it make a new mold from the smaller piece.

The cool part about this is I now have 3 different sixe Loki helmets to work with.

Origami Boxes

This year in an ornament swap, I received all kinds of goodies, and a hidden "who knew" kind of goodie.
One of the little ornaments came in a hand made origami box.

the box that started it all

This little box started a flurry of  box making obsession at my house. My kids made a ton of boxes for their holiday gift giving, and I am excited, as I will never have to purchase a gift box for my jewelry again.

my kids making boxes

I actually started using the hand made boxes for my Etsy orders, and have received nothing but positive feed back. Its a great way to use all that wonderful scrap-booking paper I don't actually use for scrap-booking.

There are actually lots of how-to origami box instructions out there. Im just adding another one to the mix. Hope its helpful!

Happy New Year!

Well 2013 was quite the crafty year. My biggest craft project was completing grad school. Yay!

I managed to write 48 posts. Not to bad, my goal is to have new content every Thursday.
Why Thursday? So I can have Monday- Wednesday to write it. That and most bloggers focus on Mondays and Wednesdays for some reason.

I will continue with that goal of new content every Thursday.
Im also goal setting for more tutorials, and more random posts through out the week.
I want to make sure I am providing content, and not just reposting cool pictures (I will do that still, but try to have those be additional posts).

Going to try to have a few more cross over promotions, trying to get more readers to my content, and to my facebook page as well.

2014 looks like it has a bit more sewing in store for me, so there will be more sewing posts as well.

I hope everyone is looking forward to a fantastic 2014, I know I am!

~Laura

Crafting for the holidays

Ive been a sewing fiend for xmas this year!

I made spats/ faux leather boots for my kids. The octopus is for the steampunker, and the fleur di lis is for the pirate.

Steam kid also got some jodhpurs, since those are really handy for airship crew, pirate in training got a tri-corn. 

The hubs is still waiting for his goodies, a Star Wars shirt.

Processes

Im making some new fan art pieces.

Actually its a commission piece, but Im running with it and making a few fan-fic art pieces, because I am inspired!

Topic:Loki

Style: scrap book tag

One of the reasons this is a fun project is I am Loki'd, kind of. I mean yeah hes not the good guy, but hes got long black hair, and really, all the best lines. Have you seen the latest Thor yet? He really does have the best come backs and a high snark appeal.

So there are lots of good quotes to use, plus since he is a Norse god, I can use some celtic patterns in the mix.

The dimensional icon, his helm

Ok so I start with some sketches:

Next up make the pieces I need for molding. Te end result is going to be in metal clay. That has limited work time, so I like to be well prepared.

WhenI first got into metal clay I gutted a cheap thrift store typewriter (metal alphabet stamps were not readily available, like they are now). For the quotes, and I am making a selection of them (like I said he had some great lines). I stamped out the quotes in polymer clay and cured it. I them make reverse stamps using polymer clay of the phrases/ words. This way the word is all good the stamp at once, and I dont have to worry about the metal clay drying out while Im looking for a "T."

The helm was a bit of a challenge. At first I thought I would go with a layered piece, basically flat art, but with the appearance of having dimension. I *thought* I would use the polymer clay technique called tear away, where you burnish a photocopy onto the clay and the clay sticks to the toner and lifts away with the paper. Well since clay formulas have been changing since they removed the phalates, this doesnt readily work any more. I even researched it and found some reports of specific color mixes, and specific papers, and....well none of it worked for me.

I dont have and cant currently afford either a photopolymer plate system or a cameo die cutting system. That pretty much means I needed to bite the bullet and sculpt it.

My next steps are making the molds from the polymer clay mock ups of the helmet and of the celtic knot dog tag I made (not pictured), then its time to break out the metal clay and get working!

Ive already started this process for some Doctor Who pieces as well. I have a few mini Tardis ready for mold making, some great text in circular Galifreyan  ready to make scratch foam texture plates, and a collection of quotes: Allonzy, Hello Sweetie, Im a mad man with a box. Of course I am partial to "I wanted to see the universe so I stole a doctor and ran away" 

And there is a whole line can be done with the bad guys, the daleks, the cyber,en, and the angels. They are my fave, as I have already started making some of those.

Need to look up more classic sayings, and figure out if I need an additional icon, and of course what would that icon be? Its not like there arent 50 years of the show to fallback on.