I spoke too soon

Things are not going well with my dad's health, so I canceled my flight home and will remain here in Arizona for awhile. So far I've survived the heat, but the monsoons arrived and right now I'm enjoying an amazing sound and light show of thunder and lightning. As long as there are no tornadoes, I don't mind the storms at all. (Our farm was destroyed by a tornado while we huddled in a tiny storm cellar when I was a kid.)

I've been going nuts with nothing to do with my hands, so I went to Home Depot, bought some electrical cable, sliced off the plastic covering, unraveled the copper wires inside, and now I'm practicing my wire wrapping skills on some very low-cost wire. I also found some Angelina fiber at a local store, so as soon as I can get to Tucson, I'll find a Michaels store and buy some translucent clay to play with.

So long for awhile.....

Greetings from Arizona

I'm spending two weeks in Arizona helping my almost 90-year-old father with some health issues. This trip was unexpected, so I never had a chance to finish posting about my Quebec trip or to show pictures of my butterfly project. All that will have to wait. I apologize to everyone who has visited the blog and found nothing new. Assuming I survive the 110 degree heat, I will be back home and posting again during the first week of July.

And now for something completely different....

Nothing about clay this time. My DH and I are traveling for about a week through Ontario and Quebec and tonight we are staying in the lovely Sleepy Hollow Bed & Breakfast in picturesque Gananoque, ON in the heart of the 1000 Islands area. Our B&B is a gorgeous antique-filled Victorian lovingly restored by our hosts, Don and Marion Matthews. It has the most beautiful living room I have ever seen in a Victorian home, and there is a wonderful stained glass window on the staircase landing. And amidst all this original splendor, there is wireless internet service!

We sometimes hesitate to stay in B&Bs because all too often they are not that comfortable for my 6'6" husband, but this house has large rooms and high ceilings, so we are very pleased. Our room is the Tara Suite, complete with king bed and an indoor hot tub which we will probably try out later tonight, although after the terrific dinner we had, we may just sack out early. We had dinner at the Trinity House Inn, another B&B-type inn nearby. The starter of smoked duck with maple braised cabbage and apple cider brown butter sauce was delicious; both of our entrees were very good, trout for me and chicken for my husband; and the maple cinnamon creme brulee was as good as it sounds.

Tomorrow we're taking a boat tour of the islands and after that, who knows! I'll be wearing a prototype of the butterfly pin I've been working on, so I'll see if I get any comments.

Playing with Liquid Clays

I've been experimenting with liquid clays recently, trying different brands and mixing different substances into them.  I've used Translucent Liquid Sculpey (TLS) a lot, especially for "gluing" baked clay to baked clay, but it isn't as clear as I want for a project I'm working on using sort of a cloissonne effect.  I'm looking for clear, vibrant colors to use for translucent butterfly wings and I want some subtle variations in colors.  To figure out what to use for my project, I compared Fimo Gel with Kato Clear Medium.

 Fimo Gel starts out the clearest and is wonderfully clear after baking at normal temperatures, i.e. the 265° specified on the bottle.  I was disappointed with Kato Clear when baked at 275°, the temperature specified on the bottle, and even after using a heat gun on it.  But then I read a paper about Kato Liquid that was handed out by Tony Aquino of Van Aken at the Synergy Conference.  "When cured at 275° it will give you a flat finish.  The recommended curing temperature is 300° for 20 minutes.  This temperature will result in a matte finish.  To increase gloss and clarity, cure an additional 10 minutes at 350° or wave a heat gun over the area until gloss is achieved."  When I followed this procedure, I got a nice glossy and clear result  with the Kato Medium.  

I found some "artist's pigments" at a local store and tried mixing them into the liquid clays. These are "no name" pigments from China and I don't think they are ground as finely as some more expensive ones may be.  I got a nice clear yellow and a bright red when mixed with both Kato and Fimo liquids, but the blues were grainy and mixing two pigments did not produce very nice secondary colors.  I found that oil paints worked very well although some of them were more opaque than others.  There are lots of colors and they blend very well, so I could get a nice range of hues.  Pinata Inks are very translucent and some of the colors really pop, but the color range is limited.  I had problems with bubbling when I baked the clay right after mixing, but letting them sit for a couple of hours until the alcohol evaporates seems to solve that problem.

When I tried making my butterfly wings (small example in the first photo), I found that the Fimo Gel was difficult to get into the tiny spaces formed by the black ribs where they come together.  I used a toothpick to apply the liquid clay, and although the Kato tended to drip, it flowed very easily into the smallest spaces.  The Fimo Gel wings had some problems with bubbles, although I haven't had that problem in the past when I applied the clear gel with a brush.  

It turns out that all three liquid clays have their advantages and I will probably use them all for different purposes.  TLS is great glue.  Fimo Gel works very well as a clear sealer over mica powders and gold leaf and does not have to be baked at high temperatures, making it safe to use with translucent clay.  Kato blends well, flows into small spaces and had no bubble problems, but having to bake at 350° or use a heat gun at the same temperature could cause problems in some situations.

In my next post, I'll show you my prototype butterflies.  And in the future, when I can get hold of some Kato Color Liquid Clay, I will see how that compares to my homemade mixes.

I'm Published!

Hooray.  One of my photos from Synergy was published in the current Polymer Cafe!  It's on page 57.  

Ooops.

Here is the link to find Google Reader:

http://www.google.com/help/reader/tour.html

Blog Readers

I had never heard of a blog reader until a couple of months ago, and now I can't do without one.  Instead of going to each individual blog to see if there is anything new and instead of having separate RSS feeds for each one, I subscribe to my blogs through Google Reader.  There are other readers out there, but this is the one I know, and it is easy to use.  I can group the blogs by subject matter and it automatically tells me which ones have new posts and shows the first part of the post in a window.  For short posts, I don't even have to go directly to the blog. The highlighted blogs in the image below have new posts.

 This link will take you to a tour of Google Reader.  Then you can set up a free Google account, if you don't have one already, and follow instructions.