Pottering in the Studio

I really wanted to do some art today, but before attempting anything, I just knew I had to have a clear-up. The mess in my studio was really getting to me! There was stuff encroaching on my main work area, restricting the amount of room  had to work. As I went around the room from the door, on around to the further corner where the drawing area is, I cleared each surface and found stuff that hadn’t been put away since January when I was completing my Mamhead Woods album!! OK, I was ill soon after that and spent 2 1/2 weeks in hospital and then some considerable time recovering, but then I got very busy with other things and kind of got used to the messy state of things over the other side of the room. Funny how you can cease to notice mess after a while… Anyway, having just finished my Second Wind album, I knew I should tidy up before resuming the Infusions album.

I didn’t take any photos of the messy room till it was too late! Believe me, it was messy. Here are the tidy photos, which are a lot nicer to look at!

It feels a lot more restful in there now, and more conducive to creativity.

While tidying up, I’d found one or two bits and pieces that I decided to deal with right away. Over the past few weeks I’d set aside some different materials that I wanted to heat, to see how they would melt, and whether they would be useful in art projects. The first was some fruit labels. I also had a piece of damp proof course that the damp expert kindly cut off his roll for me to experiment with – this black shiny plastic has a rather attractive diamond pattern on it and I wanted to see if it would melt.

The fruit label shrank up very nicely and got quite wrinkled. I think this might be useful for texture, and it could be gessoed before painting. The damp proof course stuff also shrank up quite a lot, but it got very sticky and tended to stick to itself. I didn’t think it would be so useful in its melted state, but unmelted, I think it could have its uses.

I also tried melting a purple wristband that I had from a conference I attended recently – everyone was given one of these so that they could come and go freely, but be able to prove easily that they were paid up delegates when they came back in. I had been very careful with mine, thinking it was paper and being afraid to rip it, but at the end, when I tried to rip it off my wrist, it wouldn’t, which made me think that perhaps it was made of Tyvek, so I cut it off and saved it, thinking I would melt it and see.

Melting it proved my theory to be correct. This is definitely Tyvek!

All these little bits have now gone into my melted samples box.

A couple of weeks ago I was given some gingko leaves and I’d put them in my flower press. I got them out today. They have pressed beautifully but they appear to have parallel lines on them from the corrugated cardboard in the press, despite each layer of cardboard being separated by layers of absorbent paper, between which you place the flowers for pressing. I am hoping these lines will disappear once the leaves have been exposed to the air for a bit and had a chance to dry out. I have yet to discover what I am going to use these for. I am thinking of asking for some more, to try doing some eco-printing with. I simply love the shape of these leaves – so unusual.

By the time I’d done all this, I was very tired and my back was starting to ache, so I abandoned any thought of doing any art today. At least the studio is nice and tidy now, and I can begin again when I like.

We had a busy day today – I sang at church, and then we had to rush home and I had to get lunch on quickly because my hubby was going out. Most of the afternoon was taken up with clearing up the kitchen and finishing the rest of the laundry and doing the ironing.

I’ve got a nice sense of achievement now.

Stamps from Packaging Foam

The first of three posts for today.

I received a parcel recently with some grey packaging foam, and as I took it out, it bore a striking resemblance to a piece of foam I bought at a craft show ages ago, called a “Magic Stamp” which you are supposed to warm up with a heat gun and then press onto something textured. This makes a stamp which you can use as many times as you want, and when you want to make another one, you just warm it up again and repeat the process.

I thought I’d try warming this packaging foam and see what happened – nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Here is the stuff I used for my little experiment.

You can see the “Magic Stamp” on the left – the blue block in the plastic bag. Next to it is a twist of kitchen paper with some pistachio nut shells in it that I saved ages ago to use in art, which I thought might make an interesting texture.

Then the stamp I made, and my heat gun. Front row: packing foam blocks, the stamping I did on a scrap of card, and a distress ink grabbed at random.

Here is the stamp I made. I could have warmed it more and pressed it harder onto the nuts, but the result came out OK!

The stamping. After stamping twice, I cleaned off the stamp by pressing it several times onto the card to give a softer impression, then wiped the stamp over the edges of the card.

Definitely some potential here! I am thrilled that this foam, which I was about to throw away, is going to come in really handy! I think it will also be a useful asset once I finally get going with gelli printing.

Shoshi’s motto: never throw anything away until you’ve thought about whether you can make art with it!!!

Some More Embellishments from my Moulds

THE BIG REVEAL, PART 3.

This is the first of two posts today.

Many of my regular visitors have been justifiably very frustrated and impatient with me lately because I’ve been working hard on several secret projects that I wasn’t at liberty to reveal until now. With her permission, I can now reveal that I have been making stuff for Shaz. As many of you will know, she is about to undergo major surgery and has been through so much over the past year. She and her lovely hubby share the same birthday and I have made cards for them both, a get well card for her (still under wraps) and a selection of bits and pieces for her to play with once she feels up to being creative again. She opened the parcel on her birthday (14th Aug.) and now that she has received them I can share the making of them with you. Until now, I didn’t want to spoil her surprise as she visits my blog regularly. Throughout my own cancer journey, this wonderful friend has been such an encouragement and support to me, and this is one way I can thank her, and show my own appreciation and support. I know that she would love a visit from you to wish her well for her surgery on 2nd Sept.

I shall be uploading a couple of posts each day over the next few days until all is revealed. Please scroll down for earlier posts.

Some More Embellishments from my Moulds

I have cast a few more embellishments from the moulds I made.

I have made quite a few more from the pair of wings with a heart mould, and also a couple of faces from my Sculpy face mould which I have had for quite a while but not yet used. I shall use these faces for my angel project.

On the left are some which have been coloured with silver and gold gilding wax. Most of these are from my existing stash. These went in the parcel I put together of various bits and pieces as a gift for Shaz. On the right you can see the faces mould and the pair of wings with a heart mould.

I subsequently painted the hearts and wings embellishments and added Treasure Gold gilding wax.

Several of these went in the parcel.

Flightless Angels

Today, feeling a bit better again, I decided to devote the morning to some experimental work in my ARTHaven. EPIC FAIL. However, I decided to blog about it anyway, because I did come up with some interesting results, even if none of them were useable for the purpose I wanted – some may be able to be developed further and used differently, and it’s always good to learn from one’s mistakes!

The other day I made these moulds from the metal angel wings I recently got from Etsy.

I needed to discover what kind of materials would work with these extremely shallow moulds, that would be strong enough and flexible enough not to be brittle. Today’s experiments were mostly with UTEE (Ultra-Thick Embossing Enamel), and also a little with Angelina Fibre and Fantasy Film.

My first plan was to use one of the large wing moulds to make some transparent wings by pouring in clear UTEE. First of all I painted the inside of the mould with some dry Perfect Pearls in Perfect Gold.

Using my melting pot, I melted some UTEE which was already in there, which had been mixed with UTEE Flex (granules which you add to UTEE to keep it flexible). Pouring it into the mould wasn’t a great success. It was hard not to get far too much in. I scraped half of it back into the pot with the spatula.

Once it was set, I peeled off the mould. The UTEE was so thin that it tore, and wasn’t all there! The effect was nice, though.

Here’s a detail, showing the shimmer of the Perfect Pearls showing through the clear UTEE.

It was obviously extremely flexible and unsuitable for self-supporting wings. This technique might possibly work if the piece was being applied to a flat surface as an embellishment, though.

I then moved on to the smaller mould, and decided on a different approach, this time sprinkling on UTEE and melting it with my heat gun. This time I used gold UTEE. I had to hold the heat gun well back so as not to blow the UTEE away, but close enough to start to melt the surface of the granules and make them tacky, after which I could zoom in with the heat gun and melt it easily. Here it is after the first layer had been melted.

While it was still warm and tacky, I added another layer of UTEE and melted that.

The next photo shows the third layer of UTEE having been added, and about to be melted.

Once it was cool, I peeled the mould off, and was surprised to find that where the top surface was bright gold, the surface that had been in contact with the mould was a dull brown! Very disappointing. Maybe this was the result of repeated heating.

It felt fairly strong and slightly flexible, and I was able to trim away the excess with scissors.

However, on flexing it a little further, it broke.

My third test was to use the sprinkling method with the heat gun, but to add some UTEE flex. I painted the mould with Perfect Pearls again and melted a layer of clear UTEE. Once it was melted, I sprinkled on some of the Flex granules and melted it again, and then added two more layers of clear UTEE, melting each separately.

I did find that the melting UTEE tended to creep away from the mould and create holes in itself. I am not sure if the Perfect Pearls were making the surface of the mould too non-stick. Eventually as I added more UTEE, it seemed to fill up OK.

Here is is, cooling.

After it had been removed from the mould.

Again I trimmed this with scissors, and again, managed to break off the tip.

This time I decided to try and mend it, by pressing the broken edge of each piece onto the surface of the melting pot to soften it, and then pressed them together.

I heated the whole thing gently from the top which eventually got rid of the join. I think a piece made in this way would be ideal to mount supported on a flat surface as an embellishment, but I don’t think it would stand up in flight!

Being unconvinced that it was strong enough not to break, I decided to re-melt it, and this time to spread some Angelina fibres over the melted UTEE in the hope that they might strengthen it. This is the back, after it was pulled off the mould. Quite opaque-looking.

This is the front. Quite a mess. You can’t see much of the definition of the wing detail.

The back, after trimming.

The front, after trimming.

Not a huge success.

I decided to try laying a piece of Fantasy Film over the mould and putting UTEE on top of that and melting it, hoping that the Fantasy Film would pick up the detail of the mould, but it just shrank and crept away from the mould, and I ended up with a shapeless piece which was somewhat wrinkled and pitted. It was an interesting effect, though, with iridescent shimmery colours, and I may be able to use this piece in other projects.

While still thinking about Angelina Fibre and Fantasy film, I decided to try a technique I have used before with rubber stamps. This doesn’t always seem to work, and it does seem to depend on what colour of Angelina Fibre you use, for the image to show up nice and clearly.

I spread some Angelina Fibre over the mould and laid a piece of non-stick silicone baking parchment over the top and ironed it.

Very unsatisfactory! All it did was flatten and fuse the Angelina Fibre and no image was visible. Simple stamps without too much detail work best for this technique, I think, and probably much deeper-etched ones than the depth of my very shallow mould.

I tried the same with Fantasy Film laid down first, and then Angelina Fibre. Same result. Total failure!

Here are all my failures together.

Oh well.

I need a new material to fill these very shallow moulds. I am sure that polymer clay is going to be too brittle to use this thin. There is a possibility that Friendly Plastic pellets may work, and when I next cast some things from moulds, which will be soon, I am going to try using this with these moulds, but because this stuff is more like clay in consistency when melted, and not pourable, I think it may be hard to fill the moulds neatly, and difficult to trim them afterwards once they are set. FP ends up fairly hard, and this thin, it may break.

I discovered something called silk clay last night and that might possibly work. This stuff behaves like modelling clay but sets to a lightweight rubbery substance which may stand up if the pieces are not too large. I need something strong enough not to break, and slightly flexible so it isn’t brittle, but not so flexible that it won’t stand up under its own weight.

For the moment it looks as if my angels are going to remain flightless, unless anyone can come up with some helpful suggestions!

Misc Christmas Soaps Pt 2

Here are the remaining photos of the soaps I’ve made for Christmas presents.

Turned out of the moulds. You can see the brown cameo to the right of the lavender soap.

I was wondering how to highlight the cameo a bit, and then remembered I’d ordered some cosmetic-grade mica powders for my soap making, and used some of the white. I put the cameo onto the top of the soap and drew round it with a scriber, and then with a modelling tool I gouged out some of the soap. I filled the cavity with the melted soap base, scored the base of the cameo, spritzed both surfaces with rubbing alcohol and popped the cameo in place. There was a bit of leakage of the melted soap base but I was able to get most of this off. Unfortunately I lost the pristine shiny surface of the soap straight from the mould but once wrapped, this didn’t matter quite so much. I did a bit more touching up with the mica powder once the cameo was in place.

Here it is, wrapped.

I made a label for the base. All the labels were written with my sepia Faber Castell Pitt Artist pen and embellished with distress inks. In the case of the lavender soap I used Milled Lavender and a touch of Dusty Concord on the lavender flower paintings, and the leaves were painted with Mowed Lawn.

Here are the rest of the soaps, all wrapped in cellophane and labelled. For the gardener’s soaps, I put the main label on the top, and added a small label giving the ingredients on the bottom, as this was a more complicated soap, and I thought the recipients might be interested to know what went into it, making it so suitable for garden and workshop use. The lemon soaps just had the label on the bottom, with the information about how this soap removes onion smells from one’s hands. The gardener’s soap labels were coloured with Spiced Marmalade distress ink, and the lemon soaps with Wild Honey distress ink.

The gardener’s soaps. The orange Stickles glitter glue doesn’t show up on the photos at all, but it is a nice echo of the speckled orange rind on the surface of the soaps, as is the label border.

Single gardener’s soap.

Label on base of gardener’s soap.

A pair of gardener’s soaps, tied with an orange ribbon.

Lemon soaps.

Lemon soap label.

The three teddy soaps, tied with ribbon, with applied decorative bow. Each soap is individually wrapped. They are definitely too small for everyday use, and I shall be sourcing a larger teddy soap mould online.

Three teddy soaps, side view. I had to put the middle one face down because they are not uniformly thick.

All that remains now is to finish packaging the honey soaps I made before. I want to make tags for these, using honeycomb-embossed card and my large bee stamp. I am a bit annoyed that the medium bee stamp is still out of stock, and I have been waiting for some time for an email notifying me that they have arrived – the large stamp is a bit too big for this but I can make something of it, no doubt.

After Christmas being a total non-event this year, everybody will have to put up with their presents being late! This week, I also have to make a bee birthday card to go with some of the honey soaps, and hope I shall retain enough energy to get that done, or it will be another late arrival.

Misc Christmas Soaps Pt 1 and WOYWW 290

I wasn’t going to join in WOYWW this week, but since I ended up doing a blog post, I decided to after all – even if rather late in the day!

I’ve had a bad few days with a horrible flu bug that involves a bad cold, temperature and vomiting. I spent Monday in bed, asleep most of the day and feeling very cold. I am now feeling quite a bit better but still rather fazed and no appetite. Fortunately we have postponed our Christmas meal till the beginning of January so I’ve got a few days to recover.

As a result of all this, I’m terribly behind with all the things I’d planned to do in the days running up to Christmas. I spent this evening in my ARTHaven making soap – when I’d much rather have been resting, but if I’m going to have anything physical to hand over as presents tomorrow, it had to be. I still haven’t done the ironing… Yesterday, as I was pulling the clothes airer up again after taking the last lot of washing off it, the rope broke and the whole lot came down, hitting me on the back of the shoulder! It could have been a lot worse if it had been heavily laden with wet laundry! My hubby went out and bought a nice new washing line and re-hung it for me and it’s lovely again.

This will be part 1 of two posts about the soaps, because I haven’t finished – there are still some waiting to turn out of the moulds, and I’ve got more wrapping and labelling to do, and little baskets to make up of mixed soaps/bath melts/bath bombs.

Recently I found an interesting soap recipe on the Internet, for a soap suitable for after workshop time or gardening, and wanted to give it a try – one for the friend we’re sharing “Christmas” lunch with and one for my hubby. The recipe wasn’t that specific and in my more than usually brainfogged state I couldn’t be bothered to do a lot of calculation (which would have been beyond me!) so I just bunged in the amount of additives she said, for the amount of soap base I wanted to use – probably too much - as a result of which, it has come out quite oily and probably more strongly fragranced than it might have been – the next time I do it, I will adapt the recipe somewhat – but once it is dried out, it may be fine.

Here are the materials laid out for making this soap. The only thing I forgot to get out at this stage was my little spray bottle of rubbing alcohol for dispersing foam on the soap surface.

Back row: olive oil; good basic six-cavity rectangle soap mould (which, thank goodness, arrived from Ebay a couple of days ago – been waiting for it for ages!); clear soap base. Middle row: kitchen spoon; shea butter; glass bowls containing a) grated rind of 3 oranges, dried in 30-second increments on a plate in the microwave and b) two tablespoons of ground cloves. Front row: electronic scales; sweet orange essential oil; pourable natural Vitamin E.

To make 3 bars of this soap (60g soap base for each soap) I mixed a total of 180g clear soap base, and 1 tablespoon each of shea butter and olive oil. I melted this in the microwave in a plastic jug in 30-second increments, and poured a little into the bowl of ground cloves and mixed to a paste, which I then returned to the jug and mixed it well. I added two teaspoons of Vitamin E and 30 drops of orange essential oil to give a good fragrance. I mixed it all together well and poured it into three moulds, and sprinkled the grated orange rind on top, and left it to set.

While that was happening, I started to make some teddy soaps for my hubby. Some time ago I got a teddy mould from Ebay for him, but unfortunately it is rather small, and not really suitable for everyday soap use, but I thought it would make a fun gift for him. I made three, in different colours.

I measured how much white soap base I would use, but did not calculate that there is always a small amount lost through hardening in the jug when pouring; this isn’t usually a problem, but it is much more noticeable when using a small quantity. I ended up having to return the soap to the jug and add some more – to a total of 25g.

The first one was coloured with three drops of yellow colour.

I was going to make an orange bear with 3 drops of yellow, 3 drops of red and 2 drops of the brown colour I mixed the other day, but the wretched dropper bottles are very unreliable – sometimes nothing comes, then you get a whole lot at once! I put in too much of the brown, so the second bear ended up being the brown one (a nice chocolate brown! – looks good enough to eat!) and after this there was a bit of soap base left in the jug, so I added a bit more, and then added some more yellow, to make a medium brown bear! All a bit hit and miss really! Anyway, he’ll get three bears (but no Goldilocks).

While waiting for the individual teddy soaps to set (having only one mould, this took a bit of time), I started making labels for the gardener’s soap. I used ordinary self-adhesive address labels cut down to the length I wanted, and I peeled each end from the backing paper and rounded the corners using my small corner rounder punch and then stuck them back onto the backing paper. I used a sepia archival Faber Castell Pitt Artist pen to write the text and create the border, and filled in the border gaps with some Spiced Marmalade (appropriate!) distress ink, using the ink as a watercolour. I then used a blending tool to distress the edges with the same ink. The final touch was to add some dots of Orange Peel Stickles (again, appropriate!) glitter glue, which of course doesn’t show up too well on the photo.

By this time, the gardener’s soaps were ready to turn out. This is what they look like.

They look more like flapjack than soap!! They smell great. The grated orange rind will act as an exfoliant, and the olive oil, shea butter and Vitamin E will all nourish and moisturise the skin after the punishing treatment the hands can receive in the workshop or garden.

I also made three natural lemon soaps for kitchen use. These were very straightforward – I used a total of 300g of clear soap base for the three soaps and melted this in the microwave as before. I put a small quantity of turmeric powder in a small bowl and added a little of the melted soap base to it and mixed it to a paste, which I then added back to the jug of soap base and mixed well. I added about 20 drops of lemon essential oil and stirred the mixture, and poured it into the moulds. The final step was to add three dried lemon slices. I made a collection of dried orange and lemon slices a couple of weeks ago, putting them on a baking sheet and leaving them in the top oven for a couple of hours at 50 deg. C, but they were still pretty moist, so since then, they have been in the airing cupboard, and when I have remembered, I have been turning them. The lemon slices are now pretty well dry and hard, but the orange ones are going to take a bit longer.

The lemon soap I made in the natural soaps class had a half slice of lemon on it, and almost as soon as I started using the soap, this came off. It doesn’t matter – it’s only decoration. This soap is brilliant in the kitchen because it really does deal with the onion smell on one’s hands – I even rubbed my chopping board with it and then scrubbed it with a brush, and the onion smell was practically all gone from that too. It’s a very easy soap to make, and one I am sure I shall be making regularly from now on, as and when we need it.

The final soap I made, I didn’t photograph – this will appear in the second of these two posts. It is a plain oval soap made from 130g clear soap base, coloured with ultramarine violet powder, mixed to a paste and added, as before. I was careful to keep this colour fairly pale. I added 5 drops of lavender essential oil, poured the soap and left it to set.

There was a small amount of the medium brown soap left from the final teddy, and I didn’t want to throw it away, so I filled my cameo mould with it. It’s not really the right colour, and I am pondering how to add some highlights to it (maybe with white soap base but not sure how I’ll get it to stick on, and I don’t want to lose definition on the cameo). The next step will be to score the back of the cameo, spritz with rubbing alcohol and adhere it to the top of the soap once I’ve turned it out, using a little melted clear soap base. If this is successful, I shall be making some more lavender soap like this, but probably making the cameo from plain, uncoloured white soap base. Any surface colouring would in any case come off the first time the soap is used.

Watch this space for how all these soaps turn out, and how I wrap them.

A quick update – my hubby went back to the hospital yesterday with his wrist, and they X-rayed it and said the bone had knit, and they took the cast off. He’s now got a wrist brace, and says it feels quite sore and very vulnerable – it’s amazing how dependent one can get on the rigid protection of a cast! Anyway, he can drive again, but he’s taking care over the next few days when we hope that it will gradually start to feel better. He’s going back in a month to get it X-rayed again, and hopefully all will be well and it won’t require pinning.