Peacock Cane

I started this peacock cane ages ago. I looked at several images of peacock feathers to get the colours and the shapes. It has to be simplified a little as I didn't want to replicate a feather exactly - too delicate. I did the centre fairly easily but was then uncertain how to deal with the outer green and gold layers. I wanted to hint at the feathers structure but didn't want to get too complicated.

Finally I tackled it and I'm pleased with how it worked out. Here's the cane

I then decided I had better make a pair of earrings from it (as I am now rather behind with the earrings a week challenge on flickr). I made then from a simple slice but decided they needed a little something to make them more interesting so I added some score lines to indicate the feathers structure and then scored a line down the centre and used that to folded them slightly (as you see I couldn't resist a little peacock too ;)

 I then remembered some brilliant design advice I got from Inga - Kni.Kni about changing the little silver balls on the ear wires with tiny beads - boy did that change the look of the earrings for the better! It lifted them from being ordinary earwires to being special. I could of chosen any of the colours in the feather but decided to pick a nice bright blue to match with the centre as I had pretty seed beads in the colour. Thank you for the tip Inga!

 My kids are still home for the summer for a couple more weeks then I hope to get a little more clay time and update you more regularly again! I hope you are all having fun.

Cara

Keeping a pendant in place - tips

I get fed up when I am wearing a pendant on a cord and then I realise the clasp has twizzled round to the front and is distracting from my beautiful creation. I keep meaning to design some necklaces where the clasp is a feature but until I get round to that here's a couple of tips to avoid it happening.

Tip 1 - Add a little extension chain (which also makes the length changeable) to the jump ring the clasp clips too and add something to hold it dangling down, here a little matching polymer clay bead. You can buy ready made little extension chains but I find they are too light on their own and still twizzle. I just bought a length of chain and used a 3cm or so length.

Tip 2 - This idea came from Caroline Harvey, Beads from the Coast, you can see more images in her flickr gallery. You wrap a bit of wire around the cord in the centre and then poke it inside the bail. Wouldn't work for all pendants. I tried it on one of mine and once I got the thickness of the wire wrap so it fitted snugly in the bail it worked brilliantly. thanks for sharing the tip with us!

Tip 3 - Use crimps or knots to hold the pendant/beads in place. The pendant shown below has some little beads and crimps holding it in the centre of the wire, the weight of it stops the twizzling. I have done this with simple knots either side if on a couple of wide pendants if I am using cord. I can't find a picture of knots though but you get the idea I am sure.

If you have any other tips do let me know in the comments below, I am sure others would be keen to see them. Hope you can find a way to string your things so you don't end up showing of the clasp.
Cara

The stages of making my purple flowery cabochon

I have been asked a couple of questions about my purple flowery cabochon pendant so here's a little more information  about how I made it. Looking at the colour differences due to the lighting in my pictures I really should go back to using my  photography set up but I took these pictures as a record for me rather than for sharing with you.

First I made 2 canes (typically I made them with little bits left over from another project so they were tiny and of course beautiful! If I had made them larger they wouldn't have been so nice, it's the cane law!).

The purple flower canes

I then hand formed a cabochon shape from scrap clay, starting with a ball shape which I cut in half and smoothed it down onto my work surface. I don't get the shape perfect at this stage as it will be squashed about when I add the decoration.


I covered the scrap clay cabochon shape with thin slices of the cane pressing them in firmly once I am happy with their arrangement and not worrying too much about the distortion of the shape of the pendant. I use a knitting needle (a short double ended metal one, it's my favourite smoothing tool) to smooth the cane slices so the joins were no longer visible. The cabochon then needs a little reforming (OK quite a lot sometimes!) and then gentle smoothing to remove finger marks. It is then baked, for more information about getting the ideal curing conditions  see my latest curing experiments

Cabochon after first baking, unsanded (yes this is a different one from pictures below)

When making this pendant I couldn't decide whether to give it a border 'frame' or not. So I took a picture without then added one and took a picture with the border so I could compare side by side. I decided the 'frame' added to the look of the pendant so was worth the extra time.

These pendants have been sanded but not buffed. I make the basic shape, bake and sand it then I add the backing, bail and a border. It's then baked and  repolished with the last few grades of sand paper only and buffed with my homemade dremel buffing wheel. I have tested it out and found you don't get a better shine particularly by sanding and rebaking but it does mean it is easier to sand right to the edge if there isn't a border in the way. It is better to add the backing, bail and border to a baked cabochon as you don't distort it whilst doing so.

Here's the finished piece!

Hopefully that answered the questions, if you have any more feel free to ask either by comment here or email me (see the contact me link above or to the left). Also if you are having trouble leaving comments can you let me know - by email I guess.  Thanks

Cara

Polymer toggles

I have been thinking about making some polymer toggles for a long time now. I like toggle clasps I find them less fiddly than the lobster type clasps, especially for a bracelet when you only have one hand to do it up with!

I first thought about making them thinking about asymetric necklaces and using a decorative toggle as feature at the front of it, still haven't tried that yet but I will sometime!

I was asked by a friend who can't wear any metal to restring an 1930s necklace of her mothers so decided it would be the ideal time to try making a polymer toggle as it wouldn't cause her any problems.

The first set I made I made the bar too short and it fell out of the hole! So I made smaller ring and a longer bar and then had 2 pairs that work effectively (i.e. stay done up!). I made them so the tiger tail I was threading the necklace with would thread through them. I reinforced both the bar with a length of wire and the ring with a jump ring, on reflection I don't think the ring will need reinforcing. 

polymer toggle clasps

As you can see I textured them to save sanding ;) The necklace I was restringing is lovely and I have a half made polymer reproduction of it. Here is the restrung necklace - my only work in the addition of the seed beads to lengthen it and adding the polymer toggle. Not quite sure what the rest of the necklace is, to be honest it feels a lot like polymer clay but it's 80 years old and I am sure it wasn't invented then!

An old 1930's necklace, restrung and with a new polymer toggle.

Cutting polymer clay

I was reading a discussion on the Polymer Clay Central Message Board about which clay blades were rigid and shared my home made clay knife so I thought I ought to share it with those of you who don't read the forum (you should there's so much useful information there from such wonderful, friendly, talented people).

I do have an assortment of clay blades but more often than not use my own trusty blade. It's a snap off knife blade which I have made a polymer clay handle for. I have used several of these over the years (have only just stopped using the first one I made 20 years ago!) and find them very useful. The are sharp, rigid, cheap and easy to get hold of. The point makes it more versatile than a standard clay blade. I now make the handle with a flat bottom so they stand up on the table. I use the wider blades ( about 18mm across) as they are more rigid.

Although the blade is meant to snap off it won't unless you try to bend or curve the blade. For cutting and downward pressure there is no risk of snapping. As I say I've been using one for 20 years and never had any problem.

What do you use to cut your clay?

Texture in shapes

Whilst making up some pendants I thought I would be clever and try and do 2 jobs at once. Well it didn't work out how I thought but I quite like what happened.

I wanted to make a circular pendant with a textured back, I decided to cut out the circle whilst the clay sheet was over some rough sandpaper thinking it would get textured as I cut. As usual once I saw what happened it was obvious that's what would happen but you don't always think about these things late at night.

I picked up the sheet and discovered that of course it didn't texture the whole back as pressure was only applied to the area that the cutter was pressing on. But I think this could be quite a neat thing to do - texture in shapes. I'll play around with it.

PS I am going to have a giveaway when I get to 100 followers - only 7 more to go

Chokers oven friendly!

Whilst I was ordering some more chokers I saw bracelets the same, nylon coated wire with a screw closure. I am often asked to make matching bracelets for my floating wire necklaces which is a problem as I don't think floating wire bracelets work so I normally add more beads as shown below. I realise as I write this I haven't actually tried a floating bead wire bracelet - hmm perhaps I should. Any other suggestions welcome.

Wire floating bead necklace

Bracelet to match necklace (had to get creative to make the pattern repeat neatly to the size required) on elastic

I wondered if the choker bracelets might be the answer. When they arrived I realised they had a different screw fitting, a textured one rather than the plain smooth barrel and I didn't like the look. My first thought of course was - I'll cover it with clay. But would the nylon coating on the wire be OK? I tested it and the answer is yes! I wanted to try it out so made a quick bracelet - not very happy with it as a bracelet but it's something to work from.

Nylon coated wire bracelet with screw closure (the one on the right on it's own is the covered screw barrel)

I had to make the hole in the beads reasonably large to fit over the screw fixing. They are larger than the covered screw barrel, I was in a rush and not thinking about it too much. It would probably be easiest to make the barrel covering a feature rather than trying to blend it in to the beads. I am not sure how you would secure them? Might try baking some right onto the wire next. You would need to secure at least one at the end or every time you took it off they would go flying everywhere! So something else on my list of things to try....

Pasta Machine Thickness comparison table

Since I started improving my polymer clay work by following tutorials and going to workshops I have found it very confusing when people give you a pasta machine thickness as the different brands (particularly Atlas and Imperia the main 2 quality machines) don't compare easily. I have an Imperia machine which I love, it is easy to take apart to clean, only requiring to remove the end plate on one end (the one without the knob) with 1 screw and then I can push out the rods by hand and clean the scraper plates. I recently acquired a cheap Kitchen Craft pasta machine which looks like an Atlas but it doesn't run smoothly and the clay always wrinkles up on settings 8 and 9 - I would pay the extra and get a quality machine if you can.

I spent a lovely day in London yesterday with the London Polymer Clay Group (it was a blissful 2 hours on the train from me which I thoroughly enjoyed and I managed to squeeze a flying visit in to the jewellery gallery at the V&;A museum too!). I had already made thickness chips for the 2 machines I have and Nina kindly allowed me to make a set on her Atlas so now I have all 3! Here's the measurements

This is what my chips look like

 They will probably be a bit different from machine to machine and possibly even from different sides of a sheet depending on how straight the rollers are but hopefully it's a useful starting point.

So if you want to compare I would say as long as you remember a 1 on an Imperia is about the same as a 2 on an Atlas, 3,4 and 5 are much the same and the thinnest on an Imperia is like a 7 on an Atlas.

(Toni the table won't be visual enough for you - your machine is very close to the atlas measurements)

Polishing and buffing

I am trying to get ready for my first sale on Friday (my mum sold some bits for me at a charity coffee morning a few weeks back but I wasn't there and she did all the display etc). I don't have as much stock as I would like (where does the time go?) but I am working on it!

I have been polishing many of my beads in a rock tumbler recently. I half fill the tumbler with small smooth pebbles, bung in a handful or two of beads add some water and a drop of dish soap and leave them to it for about 24 hours. Thanks to Desiree for the information and friends on  PCC forum for their advice.  It's great, they buff up beautifully with little effort on my part! The tumbler won't smooth out scratches or bumps so some pieces I hand sand with coarse wet and dry first but it still saves me working through all the other grades of paper!

I am buffing with my home made muslin buffing wheel on the dremel and I can get a beautiful glass like shine on a well sanded piece. I was buffing round beads with a few strung on a wire which seems to work well. Tonight I decided to make a bracelet and then buff it (not sure why). Unfortunately I found out the hard way that it isn't a smart idea to buff beads on elastic! It all started off going well but just as I was getting round to the last few beads the elastic snagged on the wheel  and ping - beads everywhere!!! The elastic got wrapped round and round the spindle - probably could of saved it if I had turned the dremel off quick. Won't do that again!! I also really must set up a bead guard as I lost several down the back of my bench the other day whilst buffing.

I have been working on some labels and display stuff, will try and take some pictures and share them soon

Melting pens

I have been looking for some pens to cover with polymer clay and couldn't find the Bic stics that I know from people in the states are oven friendly. I tried out a few brands - without clay (having already learnt the hard way!) and they all deformed even at 115oC. I asked for help on the PCC forum and Tonja was able to suggest using some papermate pens - PaperMate Flexgrip Elite and PaperMate Flexigrip Ultra in capped rather than retractable models. I couldn't find either of those with caps either - only retractable.

I widened my trials and melted many a pen in the oven but I can conclude the following pens are safe for 115oC (Fimo curing).

• Papermate Comfortmate - capped ball pen (this also comes in retractable but haven't tried those)
• Papermate 2000 Stick
• Papermate Flexigrip Elite (I had the retractable ones cause I couldn't find the capped ones and only tested the barrel)
• Bic round stic ( I found some in a pound shop - hurrah!)
• Bic soft feel retractable pen but you can take the retractable part out and it is only the very end cap
• Staples own brand metal barrelled roller ball pen with cap - cost about £1.99

 
The following pens melt/distort in a 115oC oven

• Staedtler Sticks
• Reynolds by papermate
• Staples own - Sonix ball point stick pens
• Staples own cushiongrip ball point pens (retractable)
• Papermate 2020 Stick

Hope that helps and I hope to be able to show you some covered pens soon

Improved star cane

So I was just sitting down trying to figure out how to make them neater when I remembered I had a small star cookie cutter. I was going to use it to make an impression on the end of the block of clay to use as a cutting guide when I remembered seeing somewhere someone making a cane from cookie cutters (sorry can't remember who or where or when - I do remember it was elephants and it was a neat idea).

Here's what I did. The sheet was about 1cm thick, could of made it thicker but it reduced OK

I am pleased with the end result. I wish I had some more interesting small cutters, I have some great ones but they are too big it would be very difficult reducing a disc 15cm wide but only 1 cm deep I imagine.

Variation is the splice of life....

My favourite necklace right now is my spliced flower cane one that I made recently with the matching bracelet. 

 

one of the spliced flower cane beads

I decided to play about with the spliced flower technique to see what would happen. 

I turned them inside out (I normally put the white in the center)

the starting skinner blend logs rolled so the white is on the outside

the restacked logs after first bit of squashing

 

The finished flower

I tried 3 colour skinner blends

Using a couple of offcuts of 3 colour skinner blends

Here are the skinner blend logs before cutting into quarters

skinner blend logs cut and stacked ready to be squashed

The end result

Colour mixing

As well as making my mums birthday present (will show you soon - can't show you now as she might read my blog) I am also making cake forks for my other sister in law. She has Dorset Fruits Crockery by Poole Pottery so I decided to make her some matching cake forks. She has a set for each of the family with their own fruits and they have plums (as shown), apples, grapes and pears. I am still experimenting with inlaying or having a raised fruit (much easier!). Resisted the temptation to make fruit canes - overkill for 6 cake forks!

Dorset Fruits Plum Plate.

Anyway nearly all the colours I needed ( a yellowy cream for the background, a dark ultramarine blue, crimson red for the apples) are colours I haven't mixed before in Kato and it took me quite a while to figure some of them out. I am so pleased that I now have enough knowledge to be able to work out colours!

I was struggling with trying to think what colours I needed to make the crimson for the apples when I suddenly remembered I had printed off some Kato colour recipes from various sources on the Internet and wondered if they might help. In the folder with them I found the  Kato Colour Mixing Chart I had completely forgotten about. Wow that made life easier! I matched the colour  I needed to the chart and just slightly adjusted the amount of black - ta da perfect colour in a few minutes instead of about 30! Going to laminate one for my clay box!




The Kato colour chart I found along with some other useful recipes such as premo colours in Kato at http://www.shadesofclay.com/index.html . Hope it is useful to some of you Kato users out there!

Conditioning Kato Clay

Having recently discovered Kato clay I am now a complete convert. I love the Kato clay to work with and I now find Fimo too soft and sticky (although I now realise this is a problem with fimo at the moment). The problem with Kato is it is SO difficult to condition. I haven't tried the latest formulation of Kato which is supposed to be easier to condition yet.

I have tried some different methods for conditioning Kato clay and here are my findings.

As I would Fimo
With Fimo and Premo you can just squash up a bit of clay and roll it through the pasta machine. The odd block of Fimo would be a bit more of a challenge and would need a bit of squishing and rolling in your hands first before it was soft enough to be rolled in the pasta machine.
This doesn't work for Kato, it is too firm for me to squish into a ball from the packet and many blocks just fall into crumbs the minute you try.

Cutting slices
I found out about this from Sue on Cindy Leitz's blog, she passed on the information given on an Australian clay suppliers website Over the Rainbow. 

Cut a bit of clay and roll it firmly to flatten the clay. Lift it and turn it so it doesn't stick to your work surface. Keep rolling until it is just a little thicker than the thickest setting on your pasta machine (that's a good time to get those thickness chips out to see how

thick it needs to be).Roll the clay through the pasta machine on it's thickest setting. Without folding or bending the sheet roll it through a thinner setting. And again without folding another thinner setting, the aim is to make a thin sheet as thin clay conditions faster. When you have thin sheet fold it and roll it and continue doing so until it is conditioned.

This works but it is slow and I am impatient. Each slice is small and if you are using big amounts of clay it takes far too long. The secret I worked out at last is the initially rolling. If the clay is crumbly roll it more with the rolling pin first or you get crumbles in the pasta machine as shown (I hate that!). I try to short cut putting several sheets together but I think it is best to have them part conditioned first on reflection before bulking up. This is also basically the method recommended by Donna Kato herself and she should know!




Food Processor

I bought a little chopper just for clay. I found I could put about 2oz of clay in at a time without stressing the motor (getting horrible grinding noises) as long as I chopped them into pieces about 2x1x1cm. Run the chopper in bursts until the clay is lots of fine pieces. I then find it easiest to put the clay crumbs into a Ziploc bag and then roll them with a rolling pin in the bag. This helps the crumbs to stick together with no fear of loosing them. The clay is nice and warmed up by now and should go through the pasta machine no problem. A couple of rolls and it is ready to use.

To be honest this is a fair bit of hassle too. It's great if you are colour mixing from a recipe as you can just put the parts in the chopper and it is more than half mixed already. I am buying big blocks of Kato the 12.5oz ones so will probably have a conditioning session at the start of a project using the chopper and then store the clay in sheets. They can easily be reconditioned by passing through the pasta machine.

The bottom picture shows what it looks like out of the Ziploc bag on the left and after first pass through the pasta machine on the right.






Jana whack
This is the method used by  Jana Roberts Benzon. Basically you take your block of clay and whack it. Leave the clay in the wrapper and whack it with a hammer, rubber mallet, wooden rolling pin. Works pretty well and is a good arm exercise, tension reliever. Not ideal with those who have problems with hands/arms and it means getting stuff not in my clay kit out. You still have to do a bit of rolling to get it thin enough to go in pasta machine but no crumbs in sight!
(more info in an article at Polymer Clay Express )

Conclusion

Since I wrote this I have found that if I am colour mixing a fair amount of clay I use the chopper but other than that I tend to use the slice method cause as long as I roll well to start with crumbs are avoided and it saves getting extra kit out. I am using the big blocks of Kato so I do 1/4 block at a time - about 3 oz. This would be 3 slices so it isn't so bad.

Anyone else got any conditioning tips to share? I have heard people talk about driving over it with their car but that's a bit extreme for me I think!

Avoid contaminating your clay in the pasta machine with other colours of clay.

I am sure some of you know this already but I only just worked it out so I thought I would share it in case some of you don't know either.

I clean my pasta machine with a baby wipe between colours of clay. I wipe  the underside of the rollers (underneath the machine) where the crumbles sometimes collect and I wipe the top whilst turning the handle to make sure the rollers are clean. Sometimes though I still get annoying streaks of colour across my clay and I couldn't work out where they were coming from. I decided it was time to clean my pasta machine. My husband took it apart and cleaned it for me. Great!

Not  long after that a purple streak appeared on my white clay! Horror it had only just been taken apart and thoroughly cleaned! I played around trying to work out where the clay could possibly be coming from. I turned the handle to rotate the rollers backwards and there was my answer!

Pasta machine with stray purple clay on the rollers

I checked it out and if you turn the rollers backwards you get little stray bits of clay pretty much everytime. I am guessing my contamination comes when I inadvertantly rotate the rollers the wrong way a little. I guess it comes from the scrape plates at the bottom (where the crumbles collect on the outside).

Now I have incorporated rolling the rollers backwards as part of my cleaning routine and I haven't had any contamination issues since.

Sanding experiment

So I have been reading up on sanding and everyone agrees on wet sanding with wet and dry sand paper and also making your item as smooth as possible before baking to reducing the sanding needed. But  I still couldn't really figure out how long I should be sanding on each grade or how many or which grades of sandpaper I should use. I do know that I have had a few pieces that still had scratches on after sanding so I needed to do it better somehow.

Today I sat down with some paisley spoons and my usual sanding set up (a narrow tray with some warm water and a few drops of washing up liquid in it to help break the surface tension) and 11 different grades of wet and dry sandpaper! For flat objects I put the paper on the tray under the water and sand on the flat surface. For things that aren't flat (such as spoons) I sand above the tray and dip the paper and object in the water when I start to notice a residue. Thinking about it a bowl would be easier when not sanding flat things so will try that next time.

Sandpaper wrapped round a block

I normally just use the sand paper in my hand but today I also tried wrapping it round a block (one of the kids wooden building blocks). It made it more comfortable to hold at least so I will do this again.  I should of sanded using the same grades of paper with and without the block to see if that made a difference - next time! Quite a few people recommend using foam backed wet and dry sandpaper. I don't have any but I also just read a tip about wrapping normal sandpaper round foam for curved objects - going to give that a try too.

I had 4 spoons so tried using 4 different combinations of papers - all finishing on a different grade.

The first thing that struck me was how similar they all were! I thought you would easily be able to tell the difference between the ones that had been finished to a higher grade, but it was hard to tell. My mum even thought that the one on the left, the one finished to 1200 grit sandpaper was a little more shiny. My dad was able to correctly identify the one that had been sanded most (the second on the left that had been sanded through to 2500 grit). After a lot of sitting and feeling them I can now tell the difference too but it doesn't show visably.

How to tell when to move to the next grade of paper? I have found that for me (at this stage in my experience of sanding) I need to dry the piece to be able to tell. If I just go through the grades wet I get to the end and there may still be some scratches. If I stop and dry between grades I can see if it is ready, I can see if there are still marks or not.

So I still have things to try but I am going to stop agonising over which grades to use. I shall try and finish off with some of the higher grades if I am using a buffed finish. I'll let you know how my next lot of trials go.

Lentil Swirl Bead Tip for Patterns

Well if you have made a lot of lentil swirl beads you will already know this but in case you haven't here's something I learnt about patterns today (I don't normally swirl with patterns usually it is just a pile of scrap).

I carefully placed a flower in the centre of the ball I started swirling thinking it would look nice swirled - but it disappeared!

Swirl lentil bead that started with a flower in the centre that 'disappeared' 

Desiree does say in her excellent tutorial on making lentil swirl beads that the rotation does draw the clay from the outer areas towards the centre of the bead. With pattern this means that the pattern at the edges expands and the pattern in the centre shrinks to the point of almost disappearing at the very top of the bicone. So when choosing where to place your round ball to start swirling put the pretty bit off centre! If it is in the middle it is likely to shrink very tiny the outer edge gets huge and somewhat distorted so the best place for that pretty flower is somewhere between the two.

 

Swirl lentil with flowers placed between centre and edge

This was using up my offcuts from some Paisley spoons I made for presents today (oh and one for me too ;).
I have refined my technique and can now make the fabric up (from the preprepared canes - I still have plenty!) and cover 6 spoons in about an hour. I have a feeling I will be making plenty more so that's good news.

Buffing with the Dremel - part 1

Having sanded and buffed a load of beads by hand last week I decided to try buffing with a dremel. I wanted to get a really shiny buffed finish and I had read that you could only achieve this with mechanical buffing. I only started sanding recently and have  been buffing by hand  on a tea towel . I have never used a dremel before, I am borrowing one from my parents.


I tried the dremel buffing wheel (sewn muslin one that comes with the Dremel) last week and managed to make some nasty grooves in my work. The surface was horribly dull and the grooves took a lot of sanding to remove. I then went and read up about buffing with a dremel. I found some good information at
http://desiredcreations.com/  and http://www.glassattic.com/. Seems that the stitching on the dremel buffing wheel makes it too harsh for polymer clay so something softer was required.

So today my Dad (it's his turn to look after us this week, giving my mum a well earned rest)  and I sat down to try out buffing with the dremel again. I made a new buffing wheel from some polyester fleece fabric I happened to have in my sewing box. I cut some circles, about 7 cm in diameter and fitted them to the mandrel that you screw the regular dremel buffing wheel onto. I used 5 layers of fleece cause I couldn't screw the mandrel together with more and didn't stitch them together at all.

Fleece circles being threaded onto the screw for the Dremel mandrel

I tried it on one of the sides of the large bead I ruined previously and eventually it came up pretty shiny. It took quite a long time and it still wasn't as shiney as I hoped. It wasn't the miracle I was after ;) I think perhaps it would be easier if I had a stand for the Dremel as I am having to hold clay in one hand and Dremel in the other.  I might have another go at making a buffing wheel stitching them together - look what this one looked like after just a little use.

I am currently sanding using 240, 400, 600 and 1000 grits (what I had available). I have just ordered a set of sandpaper with 10 different grits from 180 to 2500 grit!  I don't imagine I would ever have the patience to use them all, or that it would be necessary but I will experiment a bit to see if I can start of with a smoother finish to buff. I am also off to investigate the best place to buy a rock tumbler from for my round beads - they are so hard to sand by hand!

My dad was convinved that waxing was the answer to sheen and applied the last dregs of our furniture wax and then some natural (clear) shoe polish to some of my beads (which he kindly sanded first - taking the skin of one of his fingers- ouch!). He applied the wax and then buffed it on a piece of fleece stretched over some wood (held in place with some staples). Then he continued buffing on the otherside of the wood with some clean fleece, the other side was now waxy fleece. It did come up looking pretty good but it was quite hard to tell (in my opinion, dad could see one) the difference between the with or without wax beads buffed on fleece.

Previously I had found a linen tea towel the thing that got me the best shine when buffing (from the limited selection of things I tried). Today I tried a buffing on linen and buffing on fleece to compare and the bead buffed on fleece was definitely more shiney. I have now cut a piece of fleece for my clay box.

So more experimenting is needed. I need to perfect (well improve would be a start) sanding, find a better way to mechanically buff to a high shine and  I want to try out some varnishes. I have only used the Fimo Gloss varnish on polymer clay and I am not that impressed with it. I would like to have a range of finishes at my disposal so I can choose how I want a piece to look. 

If you have any advice on buffing/sanding/polishing then please let me know it might help this part of my journey go a little smoother. 

Thank you for following me on this adventure with clay.

Cara

Storing Fimo

I emailed STAEDTLER who manufactuer Fimo about storing it. Here is their response

Please store unpacked material wrapped in aluminium foil, in tins or plastic bags (PE / PP). Please avoid unhardened FIMO coming into contact with polystyrene (PS), PVC or Styrofoam, since the surface may undergo a chemical change - as described in your mail.

So now you know ;) 

Storing clay

In the past I have stored my Fimo Soft in 2 ice cream tubs. One tub with new packets and the other with my open packets. Once I opened a packet I wrapped any left  back in the wrapper  and popped it back in the tub. Any odd scraps went in a 'scrap bag' in the open packets box. I realised that over time sometimes my clay had a few crumbs of a different colour on them which isn't ideal. The bits were just thrown in the box and rumaging aorund for the right colour was what was causing the contamination. Now I am using Kato which is firmer, and more crumbly than the Fimo soft so I will need to be more careful I think, also I am more likely to have blended colours as the range of colours available in Kato is much smaller.

I have decided to try storing  sheets of conditioned clay and mixed colours in punched pockets to see if that helps. I am conditioning a whole 2oz block at once and what I am not using I am sheeting on the largest pasta machine setting and storing in the polythene pocket. I cut down the front sheet  next to the binding so that it opened to get the clay in and out. I saw this system in a video tutorial posted by Alice Stroppel on her blog http://polymerclayetc.com/ . I'll let you know how it works out.

I have also started storing my scrap clay in different colour bags rather than all in one big bag. My old scrap bag has lots of lovely colours but all mixed up and some of the nicer colours are covered in horrible clashing crumbs. I also now have a cane offcuts bag for those small but pretty bits of scrap, thinking Natasha beads here. I think I may try and get some divided boxes so I can just leave it open on the table and throw the scrap in the right colour segment rather than having to find the right bag. Again I'll let you know how it works out and please do share your ways of storing with me. Someone must have a great system already!

I know not all plastics are safe with polymer clay but Kato web site states  Polypropylene which is marked as recycling symbol 5 is safe with their clay. I have emailed Staedtler about Fimo as I can't find any advice on their website. There is a lot of information on Cindy Leitz's blog about storing clay and she says things marked with a 1 or a 5 are safe for clay. Generally hard crystal clear plastic should be avoided - I have ruined some good canes in these type of boxes :(

If you have any top tips for storing your clay please let me know.

Next to think about how I store my canes cause a have tried a few ways and no of them have really worked...