Angels Take Flight

Today I cast some Friendly Plastic pellets in the moulds I made for the angel wings and for some gearwheels. This was a lot more successful than the UTEE although I’ve had some further thoughts about that which I will mention later.

Here is the equipment needed for the FP pellets. You can see that I am working on my Presspahn ultra-heat-proof mat (as I did yesterday with the melting pot) – please see my sidebar for details of these mats which protect the surface underneath.

On the left you can see my electric skillet heating up. I have put some water in it and set it to between 60 and 70 degrees centigrade which is the temperature at which the FP pellets soften and become useable. To the right is the tub which contained my original FP pellets and behind it, the ziplock bag of generic low-melting point plastic pellets that I bought to replace them – at greatly reduced cost! It pays to shop around because you are paying for the Friendly Plastic name and the stuff is exactly the same. You can certainly find it on Ebay. On the right you can see the moulds I made, and my UTEE spatula and spoon for fishing the FP out of the water.

Here are the pellets in the water, beginning to heat up. On the right is a ball of previously melted FP from a previous session. In future I shall flatten out any unused FP into thinner sheets which won’t take so long to melt. You can see that in its unmelted state it is opaque white.

Beginning to melt. If you look carefully you can see that some of the pellets are white in the centre and transparent around the edges as they start to soften. I call this the “frogspawn stage.”

Fully melted and ready for use (apart from the large ball which is still in its frogspawn state – you can clearly see the transparent “shell” around the still-unmelted inner core).

The water is just too hot to put your hands in, so you need something to take the FP out with. I use my UTEE kit – there’s a plastic spoon whose handle is also a pair of tweezers, and a silicone spatula. This is useful for pulling the small fragments of FP together so that they stick together, and it’s great because it’s non-stick. Melted FP does tend to stick to plastic.

This is what it looks like when removed from the water. You can see that I have broken off a small piece ready to use. It has to be moulded in your hands to get rid of air bubbles and to make it the shape you want. You have a few minutes before it begins to harden.

At any time, if it starts to harden and go opaque, and you haven’t finished, you can put it back in the hot water till it goes clear again, and if you want you can put it back in its mould too – these silicone moulds are heat proof and come to no harm in the hot water. This will make the FP go clear and malleable again.

At this point I didn’t take any more photos because I was working fast and concentrating, and more or less forgot about the camera!

Here are the pieces I cast. You can see that they have gone opaque white again as they have cooled and hardened. You can see several pieces of left-over FP which I have flattened out ready for re-melting next time.

These are the two angel wings I made from the moulds I used yesterday for the UTEE. Because the moulds are so shallow, there was a lot of excess FP around them, and I cut this away with an X-acto knife, putting the offcuts back in the water to melt again.

This was quite hard work as the stuff gets fairly hard once set. I couldn’t cut most of it with scissors but used the scissors to help once I’d got started with the knife.

After the trimming, some of the edges were a bit rough. I tried filing these with a needle file but this didn’t work very well, so I heated up my hot knife and rubbed it gently around the edges, squeezing to the back any thickness that was generated around the edges.

You can see that on the smaller one, the inner edge is still a bit transparent from the heat. The hot knife made the edges a bit dirty but that doesn’t matter because they are going to be painted anyway.

Further thoughts on the UTEE

The main disadvantage of the UTEE was that it was too fragile. It was flexible when very thin but not nearly durable enough, and if thicker, tended to be more brittle and liable to break. Overnight I thought about this and wondered whether it would be possible to give it some support – this was my idea with the Angelina fibre but this didn’t work. I really like the look of the transparent wings, especially with the gold Perfect Pearls painted on the mould first, and if I can replicate this but with added strength, it might still work. It struck me that if I proceeded as before, and then, when the UTEE was still in the mould and still hot, I could lay down on top of it a piece of acetate which would stick to the UTEE and give it strength without sacrificing flexibility, and then trim off the excess. Being transparent, the acetate would be invisible. Of course, this would have to be acetate which would stand the high temperature – the normal variety would simply melt and buckle. I have a supply of acetate sheets for use with a laser printer which of course works by heat, and I have used this stuff in the past when needing to put heat in contact with acetate, for instance when one wants to use a hot glue gun. I think this might work. Watch this space.

Another thought about UTEE is that I could make some simple, thick wings just cut to shape without a mould, and stamped with a texture stamp such as you can see here. I love this technique. You can introduce lovely iridescent colours with Perfect Pearls or equivalent.

I have also just come across some stuff called silk clay (thank you Diana of Velvet Moth Studio – Diana says she gets ideas for materials and equipment from my blog so it’s nice to be able to find things on her blog too, which will help me!). Before this I hadn’t heard of it before. It seems that it is an air-drying modelling clay that cures to a rubbery, flexible consistency, and I think this might work well. You can wrap it around something else as well (e.g. beads) so that you use less, and add strength, and if it proves too flexible for my purposes, I might wrap it around some acetate or card before pressing it onto the mould. It was this that gave me the idea of strengthening the UTEE with acetate. Anyway, initially I could find very little about it except kids’ stuff, and a lot of videos not in English (I think it may be of Danish manufacture) but eventually I came across some good stuff in English and for adults, including this very good tutorial on Splitcoaststampers, a site that is well worth a visit for those who don’t know it as it’s full of tutorials, galleries of people’s work, ideas, etc. It seems that you can colour this clay with water-based products (distress inks, acrylic and watercolour paints etc.) as well as alcohol inks and alcohol-based markers. It is available in lots of colours but for our purposes you really only need white. Again, watch this space! I’ve got a small tub of white silk clay on order and we’ll see how I get on with it.

I am glad that I did my abortive experiments with the UTEE because they may not have been so abortive after all. The Friendly Plastic wings are definitely better, and seem flexible and strong enough. Whether there is enough definition on them to show up the design remains to be seen after they are painted. As with the gearwheels I have made in the past from this material, I am planning to paint them (and the gearwheels from today) with black gesso and then add gilding wax, which I know looks good.

A Bit More Mould Making

I am now 4 days on from my fourth chemo treatment, and again, feeling better in the mornings so taking advantage of that to do a bit in my ARTHaven. I do seem to be at my best in the mornings, and then have to rest during the afternoon and evening. I am hoping that like last time, the effects will not last much beyond the first week, enabling me to take full advantage of feeling better before the next treatment.

This morning I made a few more moulds, using the Amazing Mould Putty. I had one or two fails from the past batch of moulds so remade these, and then I did a few more.

The reason one or two of my gearwheel moulds failed was that I pressed them down too far, and wiggled them a bit so they were rather indistinct, and not pressed in at an even depth all around. One or two had blemishes because of inadequate manipulation of the mixed putty, so they had air bubbles or creases.

To make a good mould, I have discovered that if you make a ball shape and flatten it slightly, so that it is still slightly smaller than the object, and then press the object down, it spreads the mould so it is big enough. Press down gently so that the top of the object is level with the surface of the mould and don’t wiggle it. The less manipulation the better. These redone moulds were very much better.

A few weeks ago I ordered some thin metal angel wings from Etsy and decided to try and make some moulds from these. I found the best way to make the moulds was to mix the putty and make it into a ball and then roll it out with my acrylic roller which is really for polymer clay. I laid the thin metal piece onto this thinly rolled out piece, and rolled over the top very gently with the roller, and then placed a flat board over the top with a weight on top, to keep it all flat. After curing, the mould peeled off the bottom of the board with no problem at all, and the metal piece remained nice and flat, making a good impression.

The wings are very thin, so the moulds are thin too, and this may present a problem with casting, but I shall do some experiments and see what works best with them.

I also made a few more moulds from some miscellaneous charms while I was at it.

Here is a detailed shot of the angel wing moulds.

The impression is very good in each case. I think the best medium to cast in these moulds will be Friendly Plastic pellets because this stuff ends up quite rigid. Polymer clay at this thickness would probably be too brittle and break. Another advantage of the FP is that I could possibly warm the centre with a hot knife so that I could bend the wings up? Not sure if this would work but it’s worth a try!

I’ll let you know how I get on.

Mould Making and Stamp Mounting

I had my fourth chemo on Friday and although I felt awful for the rest of Friday, yesterday and today I am feeling quite a bit better and have managed to do a few things. The worst part has been raging peripheral neuropathy in my hands and feet and the only thing to do is to keep them as warm as possible – not easy doing things with 2 pairs of gloves on!! Last time I had a good weekend but then crashed for the rest of the first week, so I am hoping this won’t happen again. Things were much better in the second and third week though, so I think the reduced dose is helping.

Yesterday I spent some time working on editing images for one of the secret projects I am working on, and this morning I decided to make some moulds from the new metal embellishments and gearwheels I got on Ebay last week. For one of the projects I am working on, I wanted to use a particular rubber stamp from a set I bought ages ago but hadn’t yet used, and I hadn’t realised that I had never got around to mounting them, so I did that today, too.

Mould Making

In addition to the gearwheels, I also got a couple of metal pairs of wings and hearts from Ebay. All these metal embellishments are quite heavy for use on cards, and are better on albums and other projects, so I decided to make moulds from them – that way you can use the originals with impunity, but still have an endless supply! I make them up in Friendly Plastic or UTEE or polymer clay, or even Polyfilla One Fill (Joint Compound) – whatever takes my fancy.

I finished the EasyMold Silicone Putty (the purple sort) and then started the Amazing Mold Putty (yellow) to finish this project. Need to order some more of this!

The putty comes in two pots, one coloured and one white. You take equal quantities of each, and mix them together until you can no longer see any streaking, and then you press the object into it. It cures really quickly so you need to work fast – the large mould in the picture (the pair of wings and the heart) was starting to go off while I made the impression because I didn’t mix up enough to start with, so I am not sure how well that one will work. I can always make it again if it’s not a success.

Once they are set, you can pull the object out, but you shouldn’t use the moulds until they are fully cured. I usually leave them overnight to be sure.

Stamp Mounting

My last attempt at stamp mounting using EZ Mount Foam was a bit different! Usually this is a horrendously sticky and unpleasant job, and even with Tim Holtz’ wonderful non-stick scissors with their micro-serrated blades, they get coated with sticky gunk and have to be cleaned off, and it gets all over your hands… So last time I decided to use my hot knife, after seeing a Youtube video on this, and while it worked really well, it made the most humungous smell which took a long time to get rid of!

This time, therefore, I decided on the Talc Method. I always keep a jar of unperfumed talk on my work desk as it has all sorts of uses. This time I sprinkled some on the craft mat and rubbed some on the blades of the scissors and cut out the stamps which I had already stuck onto the ultra-sticky surface. I put the clippings into the talc and kept adding more to my fingers and to the scissors, and the result was pretty good!

Clean-up was easy afterwards – all the bits went in the rubbish bin and didn’t stick to my hands. I wiped off as much talc as I could from the surface of the stamps, and put them back on their packaging. The scissors had a bit of glue on them (minimal) and I used a quick spray of Stick Away from Crafters’ Companion (an essential part of my kit).

Nice job, eh?

More later, on how I use these things.

Stamp Mounting and a Health Update

This afternoon I mounted some unmounted rubber stamps I’ve had for a while. I got these from Chocolate Baroque – 2 A4 sheets named “Harlequin Fragments” and “Lace Fragments.”

Chocolate Baroque stamps are gorgeous – I have a few different ones. It’s always worth checking for “broken biscuits” on their site. I’ve never come across this idea anywhere else but it’s brilliant. Sometimes when they manufacture a sheet of stamps, it comes out faulty, but maybe all but one, or most of the stamps on the sheet, are perfectly fine, so it would be silly to ditch the whole sheet. They cut out the OK ones and when they’ve got all the stamps that would be on a perfect sheet, they sell them as “broken biscuits” – perfect stamps making up a complete set, but just not all in one piece! They are going to be cut up anyway, so who cares if some of them are already separate? There’s a significant price reduction and well worth getting. Of course it’s unpredictable which sets will be available as a “broken biscuits” set but if you’re prepared to wait, the set you want may come up eventually. A great idea, for both the manufacturer (no waste) and the customer (good value)!

Today the EZ Mount Foam I ordered arrived. This is a foam rubber sheet with an extremely sticky surface on one side, and a cling-mount surface on the other. You peel back the backing sheet and arrange your unmounted stamps onto the sticky side and then cut them out. There’s another backing sheet protecting the cling-mount surface, and once you peel this off you’ve got your stamps mounted and ready for use with an acrylic block.

This is a job I loathe doing. Even with my Tim Holtz scissors that have non-stick blades, the scissors and your fingers get extremely sticky and it’s pretty hard work! I recently discovered a Youtube video on cutting them with a hot knife, so I gave this a try today. I didn’t do quite such a good job as on the video but it did make pretty short work of a horrible job, and it also made the most horrendous smell! Here’s the equipment I used.

I used a glass heat proof kitchen cutting mat. You can see the sheet of EZ Mount Foam, some adhesive remover wipes, Tim Holtz scissors and talcum powder, and my hot knife – this has interchangeable blades.

When I’d finished, I dipped the scissors in talcum powder and trimmed off the excess around the stamps, and cleaned up with an adhesive remover wipe. Great results all round.

Here are the two sets of stamps, cut out and mounted, and ready to use.

I was interested to read yesterday that it isn’t a good idea to store EZ Mount Foam mounted stamps on an acrylic sheet because there’s a chemical reaction that happens between these two surfaces and your stamps can end up permanently fused to the acrylic! Time to sort my stamp storage, I think! They ae perfectly fine loose in the bags like these ones. I keep the original packaging and/or leaflet so I know the name and manufacturer of my stamps, and they are hung on my little rail above my work desk. I got the split rings and the conference badge clips from Ebay, and used a piece of wooden dowel slotted through the ornamental shelf brackets to hang them from. It works brilliantly and my stamps take up very little room.

 

Health Update

This morning we went to the hospital for my pre-chemo bloods to be taken, and for my oncology appointment. I have to go to the hospital for this, rather than the surgery because extracting blood from a port requires special training that the surgery nurses have not had. This morning it was pretty horrendous because although they were able to insert the needle and flush the port-a-cath, the blood simply would not flow! On the third attempt she got a reasonable sample.

We then went down to Oncology and I saw Dr. Dyke, Dr. Lo’s registrar. I reported to her how poorly I have felt throughout the three weeks since my last treatment, with all the side effects being more severe and longer lasting than after my first treatment, and after consulting with Dr. Lo, she said they would reduce tomorrow’s dose by 10 percent. The amount is calculated on body weight but every individual is different and not everybody responds in the same way, and sometimes adjustments need to be made. I also asked if she knew exactly how many treatments I would require, because all I’d been told was that it would go on for six months, and I’d worked it out at 9 or 10, depending on when they stopped, and she said it would only be 8! I am very pleased indeed to hear this, because three weeks from tomorrow, I shall be half way through!! Yaaayyy! Full details on my Cancer Diary page.