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Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Clay Picture Tutorial: Violin

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I can post a picture of the finished product now that it is in its new home. If you want to see it closer then click on my flickr account in the left sidebar, that will take you to my photostream where you can enlarge it.

I already went through the very earliest steps in my last tutorial post here. I will continue where I left off in this post.

I make the focal point of these pieces out of colored clay. I have done the whole thing in white before then painted a scene over it and I didn't really like it as much. As you can see I am on a tree kick. I have one more to do with a tree in it and then I can branch off in a different direction. Branch off... get it? Ha. Anyway, moving along.

I like to mix the trees like you'd mix up one of those cool swirly beads people make out of polymer clay. I've never actually made those beads, pretty much just trees. But that is about all I draw as well, so go figure. So I chop up the different colors, 3 or 4, so they mix better.

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Squish all this in to a ball and really blend the swirls together so when you roll it out it looks all treeish. (Very technical here, as you can see.) Then go ahead a roll out the clay to tile thickness. I then take a clay slicer (knife will work) and make slits in the top and bottom of the rolled out 'tree', these will become the branches and roots. I twist these sliced pieces then roll them out flat again, shaping them as needed to look like branches.

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I lay these on aluminum foil and use the foil for transport and baking. I don't even use a pan. When the piece is just out of the oven I can then grab the foil (don't touch the burning hot lava piece of clay though!), I sandwich it between layers of plain paper and then lay a heavy book on top.

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The Writer's Jungle. Wonderful writing program and equally wonderful tile flattener.

Once the tile is cool then you can glue it to the primed background. Pick a strong adhesive that is safe for polymer clay.

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Then add any other elements that you want to be made out of colored clay. I usually put a figure of some kind. I have no advice here. I would gladly take some if anyone is offering however.

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Okay, that is enough for today. Next time I will demonstrate how I truly am bad at organizing the middle parts of my plans. I get it done, but I am sure there is a better way to go about this. I will leave it up to you to streamline this process as I am somewhat committed to my messy ways.

2 comments:

Maria said...

I, for one, am happy, happy, happy, that you are offering these tutorials. It's really under the category of "things I would love to craft someday but probably never will and will end up BUYING one from mommylion" but i like to know it's out there all the same.

Anonymous said...

I love this ! I found your blog looking at an old swapbot swap. and thought I'd see was involved for the fun of it. So glad I did !
I really like what I see! I am going to follow you and would love for you to follow me too.
FlowerImpressions
http://flowersbyterica.blogspot.com/