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After reading Maureen Carlson‘s Book – Fairies Gnomes and Trolls, I had to try to make a Fairy.
 Fairies Gnomes and Trolls by Maureen Carlson A couple of weeks ago I actually decided to have a go at trying to make the little one described in the book, but we had a bit of an issue with our Gas Supply and it got turned off. It’s a long story, and I am going to tell you about it anyway. We moved into our home in December 2008, the house was brand new and nobody had lived in it previously (we are renting). Anyway I rang up to get the gas connected as you do and signed up for a good deal including both gas and electricity with a guaranteed minimum of 25% green power and got a bonus 2yr subscription to Marie Claire magazine. Very exciting since its a magazine I actually think is worth reading! A few months later the magazine stopped coming and I rang our provider to query it and was told that they tried to connect my gas, but it didn’t work. Our gas was on, there was no problem with it, so I just sort of shrugged it off. At some point our landlord sent us a gas bill that was sent to him, I let him know I had signed up already and he shouldn’t receive any more and we paid that one. Never received another account. At one point we received an electricity account, thought it was a bit exorbitant and checked the metre and they had read our next door neighbours metre and we had our bill adjusted. The gas kept working and we kept not getting billed so I just forgot about it.
2 weeks ago my brother called from home because there was a tradesman at the house disconnecting the gas. He had looked up online and it’s illegal to disconnect gas without notice. I called again and was told by my provider that they tried a couple of times more to connect us but again got rejected, and I should call other providers to find out who has the account. So I called probably the biggest gas provider and low and behold they had an account linked to our metre number, it had not been paid after several notices had been sent and the line was disconnected. I couldn’t find out anything about the account because it was not in my name; I couldn’t connect the gas because this account existed and it was disconnected because that person hadn’t paid the account. So what had actually happened was that when we moved in, our neighbours did too. And they must have rang up to get connected before we did, didn’t quote their metre number just the street address, muts have given our address and got the gas signed up, so every time I and my provider tried to connect it it kept getting rejected because there was already an existing account holder who did not request a disconnection. Then my neighbours moved out and decided to not pay their last few bills, the notices were getting sent to them and our gas got disconnected. This happened on a Thursday I spoke to someone on Thursday they again tried to get my gas connected, because now it was disconnected but again got a rejection, this time the rejection was due to the account not being paid and being with their credit department. So… after the entire weekend without gas and a 2 hour phone call on Monday we finally got our gas reconnected and I had to do it with the provider I didn’t want because they had stuffed it up in the first place and it would have been too difficult to sort it out with my own provider.
 Polymer Clay Fairy Waiting for her Wings Anyway, how is this related to fairies and polymer clay? Well, because the gas was off we had no hot water and no stove top, and well I thought I would need to partial bake the clay while working on the fairy so I couldn’t use the oven and didn’t start it… Days later I found out that our oven is electric anyway, its only the stove top that is gas, so I could have worked on it anyway!?! Doh!Polymer Clay Fairy Waiting for her Wings It took me a couple of weeks to look at the book again and decide to play, so here is my Polymer Clay Fairy. She has been baked and Glazed and is just waiting on her wings. I have decided that instead of getting clay wings I will give her wire beaded wings – totally impractical for flying I know, but I am sure it will look good. Anyway, surely the flying is magic related right? so maybe the wings don’t need to be aerodynamic at all, maybe they just need to be wings?
She is made out yellow Mont Marte Make and Bake Clay, Black Mont Marte Make and Bake Clay, Sculpey III – White (3 parts) Mixed with Violet ( 1 part) and has a Sculpey Studio satin glaze.
 Polymer Clay Turtle Baked Ala Christi Friesen So here she is, my first Polymer Clay Turtle! She is made out of Mont Marte Make and Bake Clay and some Sculpey III and I brushed on a teeny amount of Pearlex Turquoise. Yesterday after work, I went to Selonj Beads for the first time, after viewing their stock online a few times. They have all of Christi Friesen‘s books and have also hosted workshops of hers, so they had a copy of the book I wanted and it was signed!!! yay! I also grabbed some micro beads (teeny teeny beads smaller than seed beads with no stringing hole, used for eyes in little figurines); 3 containers of Pearlex Mica Pigment Paints (Antique Silver, Turquoise and Antique Copper). Selonj beads was clean and well layed out and I will definitely go there again! They also had their latest newsletter on the counter and are expecting Christi to visit Adelaide and host a workshop in September next year (2011), hopefully I am not Friesen-ed out by then, it would be so awesome to meet and learn from her in person. Though, if you have read any other stuff about Christi I am sure you know her books and tutorials feel very personal anyway. She is highly entertaining in prose.
 Christi Friesen Under the Sea Sculpture Series 3 So I bought a copy of Under The Sea you can purchase signed copies direct from Christi and she also has a deal if you purchase all of the series in one go. I peaked inside a few times on the way home (at red lights ok?!) and read it cover to cover when I got home. The book is sized between an A5 and A4 and has 47 pages, it feels a bit like a good magazine quality wise, but its not about what the book looks like in this case, it’s about what’s inside it. [Well actually most good books are!]
I made my first turtle today. Her name is “Christi Turtlington” what do you think?
 Polymer Clay Turtle UnBaked Ala Christi Friesen  Polymer Clay Turtle Baked Ala Christi Friesen “Christi Turtlington” is about 2 inches (5cm) from nose to end of her rear flippers. She has two rows of seed beads on her shell and blue wooden beads for eyes. She was a lot of fun to make and I am looking forward to making lots of friends for her to hang out with!
She still has to have patina added but for some reason (well ok I know the reason) I can’t find my paints…. Reason – I have been living here for 18 months and still have not unpacked properly 
 Polymer Clay Warring State Beads Before baking I’m not sure I am doing myself any favours putting photos in here at this scale!
Anyway, I have never done lampworking, but have always thought that warring state beads were pretty cool. What the? you say? Well I didn’t realise what they were called either! but if you want to know why here is a WikiPedia Article on them . I thought it would talk about something metaphorical relating the colours on the ‘horns’ to states or something, but they are just basically named that because of the name of the era they started being produced in… Cool name though. They are also referred to as eye beads, so maybe the term ‘horn’ used to refer to the concentric circle thingamabobs is a misnomer? Should we be calling them eye stems?
Any hoo, so I found a tutorial at Kalmbach Publishers for purchase written by Lura Hatcher for purchase for $3.95 and well I wanted to know how to make warring state beads in polymer clay instead of using lampwork, so I got it. It’s a well written easy to follow tutorial, but from looking at the bead and figuring out how you would go about it, that is pretty much it, so if you want to guess at it, go ahead. Otherwise get the tutorial, or email me and I can give you a breakdown on how they are done…
They are quite pleasing when they start coming together and for someone with hints of OCD (especially in relation to symmetry) they are quite therapeutic even, if you don’t like production style work that takes a while and requires patience before you can see the final product then it’s not for you.
Things to watch for:
Materials I used:
- 1 pack of Sculpey III Black (56g)
- about 1/2 a stick of 3 colours of Mont Marte Make and Bake Clay (they look like the size of crayons) ~ about 6g per colour
- 3/4 of a pack of translucent Sculpey III
- for each colour I mixed 2 parts Sculpey III Translucent with 1 part Colour (about a quarter of the 56g block for each colour – I used 3 and had left over colours)
What I ended up with:
- 14 Large circle beads with 4 Large Horns (4 circles each), 8 Smaller Horns (3 circles each) and 16 spots (yellow in photos above)
- 11 Medium disc beads with 4 horns (3 circles each)
- 9 Small circle Beads with 8 spots and 16 horns (2 circles)
I continued with this post here if you are interested 
I did get some cheap clay – Mont Marte make and bake comes in a pack of 125g with 12 different colours. I found them at a discount art supply store in Harbour Town in Adelaide called Art to Art for $6.95.
 Free Christi Friesen Polymer Clay Owl Tutorial Instead of splurging and buying every Christi Friesen tutorial I could find, I downloaded her Free Owl Tutorial from her site (I also sent a gushy groupie email that I am a bit ashamed of but hey like I said, very obsessed).
So anyway, I am now going to regale with my tale of clay way too hard to condition and how I dealt with it and what I ended up with. The day after my brother’s beautiful wedding I jetted to Harbour Town, picked up the cheap clay and the cheap wooden sculpting tools and sped home in anticipation of playing. Naturally I picked up the white clay and started attempting to condition by hand. 2 Hours later (YES, 2 hours!!) I was still trying. Anyone who knows me understands that patience is not a word that anyone would be able to use in relation to or even sometimes near me, so please understand my pain here… The piece of clay I was trying to work with would have been no more than 10g (I think that is less than 0.5oz). By now the balls on the palm of my hand under my fingers (do they have a name?) felt bruised and just holding the ball of clay in it hurt let alone attempting to roll it.
I looked for tips on conditioning clay and attempted the following (most of them were listed at the glass attic)
- Using any body lotion and rubbing it into the clay (body shop sample I got in a gift), the glycerin in the lotion can be used as a solvent, this had little to no effect.
- Wrapping the clay in cling wrap and dropping it into a bowl of boiling hot water for a few minutes – this made it easyish to bend but still almost impossible to knead.
- Using mineral or vegetable oils (good old canola from the pantry), may have aided a little but not noticeable at this point
- Wrapping the clay and hiding it in your warm bits (no not there!) – some suggested their bra worked, some put it in pockets and sat on it
Still had hard to work with unconditioned clay and no exciting playing in sight.
Eventually I read about how different clays take different times to condition some up to a minute (ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!), and saw other hints about stomping on it and hitting it with a rubber mallet. When I was playing with jewellery making my dad bought home (on request) a disc of very heavy tooled and polished steel that I could use as a teeny anvil, so I used this. I know I have (had) a rubber hammer that I also used for jewellery making but I couldn’t find it so I got an ergonomic heavy screw driver with a heavy rubberized grip and whacked it with that. After lots of whacking I finally started to make progress and then followed up with the previously attempted canola oil trick and eventually the clay was conditioned.
I attempted Christi Friesen’s tutorial – unfortunately with only 1 colour and not quite an owl-ie one at that and this was my result.
 My first attempt at working with Polymer Clay That is the very first thing I made with polymer clay, I loved making it, even with my saw paws… And so am still obsessed. Ok… so please don’t laugh at my little dood ok? His wing broke off as he is not baked yet, and you can see all my foibles and things while making him. I still think he looks ok for a first go and I am looking forward to playing much more!
Shortcut to Links in this Post:
Mont Marte Art Supply Company
Harbour Town in Adelaide South Australia
Art to Art – Art Supply Store
Christi Friesen’s Web Site
Christi Friesen’s Downloadable Projects
Tips on Conditioning Hard to Condition Polymer Clay
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Blurbie Thing Hi, I'm Quanita, Q for short and this is my space... Qspace
30-something - IT Geek - totally neurotic - In an wonderful relationship with a cool cable guy - Aunty to Charlotte Rose (and another niece coming in August 2012!) - introverted extrovert - Gen X - Arty Crafty
Welcome and enjoy your stay!
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July 19, 2010, at 1:12 pm
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