Art Stone Pendants – Scrap Play!

It’s been cold, cloudy and a bit windy here right at the beach, but go 5 blocks inland and it’s sunny and HOT. And, I’ve got a bit of a sinus thing going on from said weather.  So that means I have what we call the “boredees” in our family.  When you are bored, but don’t want to do anything.  So naturally, I wandered out to the clay table – no doubt herded there by my 4-legged Aussie boss who LOVES the studio.  I found a piece of scrap clay that would be a great background for a color I needed. (YES, I actually found I lacked a necklace with a mauve color – well, at least a NEW necklace..LOL).

So, here is my scrap clay – It’s Souffle Latte, Igloo and a bit of Premo Grey Granite. I’ve twisted it up to start a marbling.

 

 

 

Can’t go wrong with those 3 colors! This is a #3 or middle setting on my pasta machine.

 

 

 

Next, I dug out a stamp created by my Hawaiian friend, Deb Z at RSPHawaii. This is one of my favorite doodles of hers called Tribal Babe Border. Out came the Pan Pastels (actually they were closer than the paints were..remember I’ve got the boredees..).  I put a small amount of the dark grey pastel on my fingertip and rubbed it on the selected babe (or babes).

 

 

I gently pressed the stamp against the clay sheet.  Now, I’m not too worried about getting a light embossing of the other babes because I have a plan for that later..

I wiped the stamp between each use with a baby wipe to remove excess pastel.

 

 

 

So, I just kept adding babes to the sheet of clay.  No social distancing happening with these gals – at least on my clay.

 

 

 

 

Now, I recently made some positive versions of my beloved 2207J stamp with Liquid Sculpey.  And while doing that, I discovered that you definitely want to peel the baked LS off the rubber stamp while it’s warm, otherwise it can stick to the rubber!  The result was some rather random, twisted pieces of texture that I immediately thought, “Yeah, I can use that!” (Boy was I sweating and swearing in fear that I had ruined my 2207J.)

But if you don’t have random torn pieces of texture, you can make your own with rough sandpaper that you tear or cut the edges right?

I curved the stamp around my finger and stamped between the images and sometimes over the images.

Once I was happy with the textures, I lightly applied the Mauve(ish) Pan Pastel to the clay in spots using my finger. (FINGERPAINTING – about my speed today) And then added the opposite color – a forest green color as well.

 

 

 

 

Okay, so I’m obsessed with these rectangular bezels and these particular ones come with clear plastic bubble things I guess to mount pictures under?  Anyway, the plastic makes a great way to “shop” my pattern and then make accurate cuts without measuring (THANK GOD- no Math during this mood). I *knew* I kept these plastic things for a reason!

 

 

Once I’ve cut my pattern with my straight edge blade, I just trim the corners a little bit with the blade to fit the rounded curves of the bezel.  Yes, I think it would be smart to use an Exacto to do this, so that I could cut more than one out of a sheet, but I’m just gonna bundle it up, re-roll it and start again anyway.. (I also don’t want to put too much pressure on that plastic bezel while I cut around it because I don’t want the clay to stick to it or transfer the powders.)

Me likey!

 

I like to drop these into the bezel and bake them in the bezel because I can gently nudge the clay to fill the bezel neatly.  And also, these bezels have a texture in the bottom that the clay can grab onto for now. After baking, I remove them and glue them in and the texture helps there as well.

 

 

I bake on my Amazon box flaps and the one that I grabbed happened to be my “embossing powder sheet”.  Hmm, sure! Why not? So I get into my embossing powder drawer and add my verdigris and “white washed wood” powders.  Tiny, tiny bits..cause we know it blooms when it bakes…You can barely see it in this photo right?

 

After baking and cooling, I lightly sealed the powders on the pendants with Golden Matte – like one brush over because I didn’t want to disturb the powders.

 

 

 

 

 

Remember I said a little embossing powder goes a long way?  Obviously I got a little carried away on the pendant on the right (I still love it tho – those are ancient ancient cave drawings now) and it’s about perfect on the left.

Okay, I’m happy..

I made something..

I was entertained when nothing else seemed interesting..

And the Aussie got his studio time…

 

xoxo, syn