Silk Clay, and Some More Friendly Plastic Embellishments

Friendly Plastic

I have made quite a few more Friendly Plastic embellishments 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. All the wings have now been painted with black gesso and will be finished with gold gilding wax and red acrylic paint as before.

On the left in the photo are some Friendly Plastic embellishments which have been coloured with silver and gold gilding wax. Most of these are from my existing stash. I am currently putting together a small collection of embellishments, die-cuts, paper flowers, backgrounds etc. etc. as a gift for someone who needs a bit of cheering up, and these Friendly Plastic pieces will go in that parcel. On the right you can see the faces mould and the pair of wings with a heart mould.

Silk Clay

The silk clay I ordered has arrived in the post. I ordered a small tub (40g) to try, but because it is so light, there’s plenty in the tub to make quite a few pieces and to experiment. If this is successful, a larger tub is available. Silk clay is a type of self-hardening (air drying) polymer modelling clay which cures to a rubbery, flexible consistency. It can be painted with a variety of media, both water and alcohol based.

There are lots of available colours, but I bought white because I thought it would be more versatile and useful.

From the next picture you can see the consistency of the clay. It is like very soft marshmallow, quite foamy and easily mouldable, and it has a slightly strange, but not unpleasant odour.

After experimenting a bit to find the best way to press this into the mould, I ended up by rolling out a piece quite thin, and then rolling it onto the mould, not worrying about it going over the edges of these very shallow moulds.

I made these moulds from Amazing Mould Putty, a two-part silicone rubber which you mix together and which cures to a flexible rubber after a few minutes. These particular moulds were made from very thin metal angel wings, and have presented me with a problem because the moulds are so shallow, and it is hard to get enough strength without brittleness from the various media I have tried with them. The best results so far have been from Friendly Plastic pellets – a low-melting point plastic, which resulted in quite strong pieces with enough flexibility not to break.

Here is the piece removed from the mould. In order to avoid stretching it, I turned the whole thing over, and gently peeled the mould back from the piece, leaving it on the craft sheet.

It was a simple matter to trim the excess away with scissors. You have to be careful when doing this because if you allow any part of the object to touch another part, it will stick, and when you try and pull it apart, it stretches, ruining the piece and necessitating starting again. The cut away pieces will also stick, so care needs to be taken.

The completed piece.

Several other pieces drying. The drying time varies according to temperature and humidity, I think – I have left them overnight, and in the morning I shall see how flexible they are.

These pieces are very thin, and may not be strong enough to be used alone. I have an idea that the definition of the moulded texture has diminished slightly since being removed from the mould. If they are not strong enough, my plan is to stick them onto a card backing, which I may emboss first for interest.

Watch this space for progress! I am grateful to Diana of Velvet Moth Studio for mentioning this product, which I had not heard of before; this stuff is interesting to work with, and very easy to handle, and I think I may end up adding it to my creative smorgasbord.

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.

First Soap Making Class–Learning the Ropes

Tonight I began my second 5-week course of evening classes this autumn. Since my hubby was doing a 10-week water-colour painting course, and the felt class was only 5 weeks, I decided to enrol for the soap making class. This is being taught by the same excellent teacher who did the felt-making course I finished three weeks ago. This time we have moved from the woodworking room at the school, upstairs to the kitchen, which is a gorgeous big, light and airy space with great facilities. It really is a beautiful school – very modern and very well equipped.

I got so carried away in the class tonight, that again, I completely forgot to take any photos during the class!

What we did tonight was to learn the basics of the melt and pour method of soap making, and we each made two basic soaps. This is an extremely simple technique. We were provided with two bags of lumps of the soap base, one white and the other clear, and all we had to do was weigh out a certain amount, and melt it in an ordinary microwave for 30 seconds or less, add some colour (only a few drops necessary) and some fragrance if desired – this came in two forms, either fragrance oil, which our teacher explained was synthetic, and the more costly essential oils, distilled from natural ingredients.

I decided not to add any perfume to mine, as I can be a bit susceptible to strong smells, particularly artificial chemical-type smells, with my M.E., and also I wanted to try the soap first of all in its purest form. Also, my hubby suffers from allergies and his skin is very sensitive to such things, and always has to use Simple soap to avoid coming out in a rash. I wanted to see if I could make soap which would be suitable for him.

The final step was to pour the liquid into a silicone mould and leave it to set. Any bubbles were dispersed with a quick spray of rubbing alcohol. Because our time was limited at the class, the teacher put the moulds in the freezer to speed up the process, but she said it was better left overnight, especially with the clear variety, which tends to go a bit cloudy if it is set too quickly.

There was a choice of moulds for us to use, including one of a gingerbread man. My hubby is very keen on teddy bears, but there was no mould for one, so I chose the gingerbread man as the closest thing! For his soap, I added some brown, and a few drops of orange colouring.

My second soap was made from the clear base, to which I added some glitter. This is cosmetic glitter, not normal craft glitter. When the soap came out of the mould, all the glitter had sunk to the bottom (a common occurrence, it seems) so it was all at the top of the piece of soap once it had been turned out. I have found some special soap base on Ebay which apparently enables any additives to remain in suspension throughout the soap and I may get some of this. Perhaps if I left it to cool a bit more before adding the glitter, it would hold its position in suspension a bit better, too.

We got on quite speedily at the beginning of the class, to enable the soaps to set enough to come out of the moulds so we could take them home. The second part of the class was devoted to the packaging of the soaps, and the teacher had brought along a big bag of sheets of cellophane, ribbons, labels, etc. etc. for us to play with, including some card, and a basic box template to make packaging for our soaps. My box didn’t turn out well; it wasn’t actually quite wide enough for the gingerbread man, whose arms stuck out too much! Also, there were no rulers, and I only had my nail scissors to cut it out. I can make much more satisfactory boxes here at home with all my equipment and supplies.

The teacher had come up with an ingenious way of matching the soaps to their owners – once they are all in the mould it’s hard to tell them apart. She issued us with small circular coloured stickers which we put on the two bags of soap base. Each one of us had their own colour. When we poured the soap into the mould, we had to add a sticker of our chosen colour to the mould beside the soap that was ours. That way each one was reconciled with its owner once they were removed from the moulds.

Here are the two pieces of soap I made. I’m afraid something went wrong with the camera for the first photos – I’ve been having some problems with this on and off, with it not focusing properly, so I’m afraid they are a bit out of focus. The first photo shows the soaps in their cellophane wrappers.

Unwrapped, so you can see them better:

Finally, one of the clear snowflake soap. This one is in focus! I love the ice-blue of this one. It’s really pretty.

This soap is gorgeous to use. It gives a good lather, and is incredibly soft to the skin – my hands still feel really soft several hours after trying it.

In the next two classes we will be continuing with soap making, and in the final two, will be making bath bombs and bath melts.

This first class was really very basic, and apart from choosing colour, fragrance and shape, there wasn’t anything desperately creative about it, as all we were doing was taking some shapeless lumps of soap base and melting them and making them into a different shape!! However, in subsequent classes we will be taking the technique further and learning how to layer differently-coloured bases to create some interesting effects.

One soap the teacher showed us was in the shape of a snow globe. The base of the globe was opaque white, and the top was in the shape of a dome, made from the clear base, and standing up in the middle of this was a tiny soap gingerbread man. There was glitter suspended in the clear soap.

Next week we will be making natural soaps, with different additives such as wheatgerm and loofah. The teacher showed us an excellent book:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Soaps-Cozy-Elaine-Stavert/dp/1861086458

which has lots of recipes in it, as well as the history of soap making, and some great information about different additives for different purposes. For instance, she explained to us that certain essential oils and other additives are good for different skin conditions, or for different purposes. A soap for the kitchen, for instance, with orange and/or lemon essential oil, will not only smell gorgeous, but will help eliminate the smell of onions from one’s hands.

Our teacher told us how she’d made some dog soap for sale once (called “Dirty Dog” lol!) which contained essential oils for the prevention of fleas, and for a good glossy coat. She also described some gardener’s soap she’d made, which would be lovely to give as gifts in the summer. I recently saw some interesting stuff online about felting around a piece of soap, and a lovely idea of suspending one of these felted soaps over the outside tap so that the gardener of the family (in our case my hubby) can wash their hands before coming in – my hubby always makes an awful mess, with mud all over the taps, and worse, all over my hand towel lol! Men…

Next week we will be making Christmas soaps. One of the examples she showed us was the “Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh” soap, with real natural ingredients, including little flakes of pure gold leaf! It was a small bar, cellophane wrapped, with a beautiful band made from gold embossed paper, with a really oriental and exotic feel. What a great Christmas gift that would make! I couldn’t smell it much because of the wrapper, but I am sure it smelt gorgeous.

Soap making is something that has interested me for quite some time. I have been drawn increasingly to the idea of making our own skin products and cosmetics, and household products, not just because they are a lot cheaper, but because you know exactly what’s in them. I am sure that a lot of the health problems people suffer these days are due in part to the bombardment of our systems by harsh synthetic chemicals. Also, anything to help my hubby’s allergies, not to mention the absolute pleasure it will give me to make things for him with my own hands, that he will use and enjoy, is a tremendous incentive! He called downstairs just after he went up to bed, saying that he’d tried the soap and loved it! Let’s hope he has no reaction to it, but I am sure he will not.

I don’t suppose I shall go all out on soap making because I haven’t got the time, with the other creative activities I am involved with, but I shall make enough for our own use, and for presents. Very satisfying!

WOYWW 273

For details of how to join in the world’s most famous nosey fest, please click on the WOYWW logo in my sidebar, which will take you to our hostess Julia’s site, where all will be revealed.

Are you ready for this?

My poor ARTHaven… I can’t actually get near enough the actual “desk” (main work area) because most of my office stuff has been dumped in my ARTHaven! Yesterday Andy and Paul (the builders who worked on our new house last year) came to finish off a few jobs that required attention, such as fixing my bath properly, to stop it moving. It is a free-standing one and came with no instructions for fitting, and I soon discovered that it wasn’t stable, so I haven’t really been able to use it, but have had to use the shower all the time. They also mended my ARTHaven sink tap which was broken, and put some silicone caulk around the sink, and around my bathroom counter, as there had been some settling over the months and the grout had cracked away. They also replaced the electric shower with a mixer tap shower in my hubby’s bathroom and fitted a grab rail for him (the poor chap is feeling his age since his retirement lol!). Finally, they added some more shelf supports for the long shelves in my office (small section off my main ARTHaven) as they were proving not man enough for all the stuff I need to store on them. Because of this, I had to move everything through into my ARTHaven, hence the chaos you see above!

We are going out all day today so I won’t be able to start visiting desks until later, or tomorrow. I cannot sort my ARTHaven till all that is over, and I’ve recovered after the day out, and also there is a spare rug in the loft which my hubby is going to measure, and if it’s suitable, I shall empty the bookcases in my office so that I can move them and get it laid down – might as well do this when half the stuff is out anyway! It will also give me the opportunity to clean the room, which is very dusty. Autumn cleaning? Why not!

You might just be able to glimpse over the chaos onto my desk, and see the bereavement card – I have made good progress on it and it is more or less complete now. I’ve finished the two-layered front section and have been working on the inside. The blog post about it shouldn’t be too long coming now!

Finally today, I’m taking a leaf out of Bridget’s book and posting a couple of foody photos – last night I made a rhubarb lasagne. Here it is ready for the oven:

and just out of the oven, being served:

The colour in the second photo isn’t that good because it’s in artificial light and even with some manipulation I can’t get it right! Anyway, you can see the layers in the lasagne in the dish. If you think fruit lasagne is weird, I can assure you it’s quite delicious! The middle layer consists of cream cheese and some cheddar, with egg and sugar. The other layers are the rhubarb, spiced with ginger, and on top is a sort of crumble, and I have added some flaked almonds. I have the equivalent recipe for apple lasagne, and that one is spiced with cinnamon. They are both absolutely delicious puddings and I served last night’s rhubarb one with Greek yoghurt. Yum yum.

Happy WOYWW everybody.

Our New House–Final Jobs

After the builders left last year, there were a few problems that developed in the ensuing months, and yesterday Andy phoned to say that at last they had a day between jobs, when they could come and tie up these odds and ends. He and Paul arrived early this morning, and it was quite like old times having them around again!

The main job that needed attention was my bath in the en-suite bathroom. This free-standing bath came with no fitting instructions, and Paul did his best at the time, but I found that the bath was moving if I leant on one side, and then a few months ago I was showing some people around the new house and one of them sat on the end of the bath and it all started to tip up! As a result of this I was very loath to use it in case the movement had caused any breach in the waste, which would cause a flood. Paul did come back and try another tactic to fix it but it didn’t work, and today he finally fixed it for good, by attaching two L-brackets to the side of the bath and onto the floor – very difficult to get at behind the bath! Unless you look behind the bath, you really can’t see them, and it now feels rock solid. Very pleasing! I did warn Paul not to drill right through the second skin of the bath and make a hole right through, because I didn’t fancy pretending to be a little Dutch boy every time I had a bath, plugging the hole with my finger!!

The grab rails in my bathroom that came from Amazon look brilliant, but the design was awful – they were a real pain to fit, and the covers kept popping off. Paul did glue most of them down but he said that a couple of them seemed to be OK so he didn’t bother. In the meantime they have both popped off, so he has now glued them like the others, so they won’t shift.

Finally in the en-suite bathroom, the counter Paul had built for me had settled very slightly, pulling the grout away, so he has now gone right around with silicone caulking and it all looks very neat. It won’t be fully cured till tomorrow morning so meantime a lot of my bathroom stuff is back in the bedroom!

My hubby has been complaining recently about the electric shower in his bathroom being far too weedy to be any good. It is obviously pretty old, and rather than trying to repair it, he decided he’d like a mixer shower tap fitted to the bath, so Andy turned up today with a second-hand one from his store, for which he charged us a very reasonable sum. It looks great on the bath! The hose from the electric shower is visible on this photo, but my hubby has since unscrewed and removed it. We are leaving the actual shower in place, because to remove it would involve making a mess of the wall. They also fitted the poor old chap a grab rail – he’s feeling his age since his retirement!!

In my ARTHaven, the grout had also cracked away around the sink, so that is now beautifully finished with silicone caulking. Also, a few months ago, the head of the tap fell off! It is an extending tap with a hose, and I was able to manage jut using the hose, but Paul has now re-attached the tap with his special super glue. I had pointed out to him a little lug on the underside which fits into a corresponding groove in the main body of the tap, but he forgot about it, and glued the tap on so that if you engaged the lug in the groove, the tap was pointing at the ceiling! He said that as soon as he’d done it, he remembered, but by then it was to late, as the glue had set. While I did agree that an indoor fountain may be attractive, it wasn’t really what was required! In the end Paul cut the lug off altogether, and the result is better than before – the tap can now be located in any position without the inner pipe showing, and it’s now working absolutely fine again.

In the office section, the two long shelves they had fitted were certainly showing their inability to cope with the heavy loads I imposed on them, so they are now strengthened with a wooden batten, and additional supports have been fitted.

In order for this work to be done, I obviously had to take everything off the shelves, and clear space for them to work. All this stuff was dumped in my ARTHaven:

Lovely mess, isn’t it. I am not intending to put it back until my hubby has had a chance to measure a rug we’ve got in the loft. If it is suitable, I shall move the bookcases in the office so that I can lay it down, and it seems sensible to do all this while a lot of the stuff is out of the office anyway. The reason I want a rug is that the laminate floor is rather slippery and offers no resistance to the castors on my office chair, which tends to scoot around all over the place when I want it to remain stationary! This has also proved to be a major problem in the ARTHaven proper, so I am unable to use my lovely comfy revolving chair, which is now just taking up space. Instead, I am using my old wheelchair (with the foot rest removed) – I can lock the wheels and it stays put. It is also very comfortable!

Moving everything out of my office has made me realise how dusty everything was, so I’m also taking advantage of this situation in order to clean up a bit in there. We are out tomorrow so I won’t be able even to think about it till Thursday and probably not then, because I will probably be too tired after our outing.

The final job was to fix Mum’s new door. They had fitted this when they replaced the window with a smaller one, so that she would have independent access into her little patio and wouldn’t have to come through our part of the house to get out. The trouble is, she simply can’t get to grips with anything mechanical, and these modern doors are more complicated to work than old-fashioned ones – she found lifting the handle in order to lock it quite incomprehensible, and somehow kept managing to lock the door when it was open, so that the lock projected and prevented the door from closing at all. She then kept banging the door incessantly, trying to make it close, and making the whole house shake in consequence, and the result was that the door wouldn’t close at all without an effort – she had obviously forced something and it was out of alignment. Paul whipped the hinge covers off and adjusted the hinges, and it now works like a dream! The trouble was, Mum then said she’d be able to lock it again herself, and I had a terrible time persuading her NOT to do this, but to continue to rely on my hubby and me to do it for her each evening. We don’t want a recurrence of the problem!

So all in all, a good day, with lots achieved. All those little niggles are now sorted!

WOYWW 229

Back again – still loads to do in our new house and in my new ARThaven, with a lot of unpacking, sorting and putting away to be done. It is all still in a state of flux and things are not all in a fixed position yet. Here is how it looks today.

I have got Sheba, my Cougar cutting machine, out of her box and she is installed where she is going to live, waiting to be connected up and ready for use. The space above my main work area now has various shelves and rails. The shelf on the left has a rail with rings and clips to suspend my unmounted rubber stamps and various other bits and pieces. Mum’s old spice rack is on the right, at the moment housing all my distress stains, but they will probably end up back in a box as I shall want the shelves for things I use more often. Above, underneath the top shelf, I have put two Ikea rails for my collection of punches. Andy (chief builder) constructed the shelf unit sitting on the work surface, and this is where my carousels live, with small drawers underneath. The little black chest came from my dad’s workshop and will eventually be painted. Please see previous blog posts for more detailed photos. The wall unit on the left has small cardboard boxes with various contents – I am not happy with the arrangement yet and this will be re-organised at some future time. Lots of storage space underneath, with moveable units on castors where I need to sit – pulled out, these provide additional work surfaces.

I have already begun on a new project for our house – replacement doorplates for the downstairs doors. Upstairs, the original beautiful Art Deco ones remain, but they have been removed downstairs. I have made a silicone mould from an original one, and so far I have cast two in Friendly Plastic, but I think I shall be looking for a cheaper material to make the rest – I need to do some research on this, and if anyone has any helpful suggestions I’d be grateful – I had considered polymer clay or UTEE but both these options are probably a bit pricey too. I don’t know a lot about resins or other materials.

Once trimmed up and painted, I am hoping to create the effect of antique brass like the originals.

We have now got Mum settled in the annexe after an extremely rocky and traumatic start – lots of stress that I could well have done without! I have been remarkably well over the move but this past week have had some bad days when I haven’t been able to do anything but rest. It’s all catching up with me a bit, I think!

That being said, we are extremely happy in our new home, and love the house, the area and the nice neighbours, and having so many amenities so close at hand. All the renovations are marvellous and make life so much easier, and my hubby has to do less to help me these days. I can cook again, and my new kitchen and bathroom are an absolute dream. Trawl back through my blog posts for photos of all these delights – the before, during and after photos! The builders are here again today finishing off a few jobs and it won’t be long before everything’s complete. We’ve still got lots of boxes to unpack, though!

For anyone wondering what this “WOYWW” is all about, click on the logo in my sidebar and it will take you to Julia’s blog where all will be revealed.

WOYWW 122

Head over to Julia’s blog (see link in my sidebar) to see what this wonderful mid-week blog hop is all about, where we nose about in each other’s workrooms and see what we’re all up to!

This week I’ve been continuing to work on various projects in readiness for a sale that’s coming up in our church at harvest. I’m hoping to sell several pieces, and if they don’t sell, they’ll do for Christmas presents, and I may start an Etsy store.

A while back I painted a whole lot of small floral ATCs with acrylic paints on a crackle glazed background, and I got half a dozen small frames and have just finished painting them and mounting the small pictures inside. I’ve done crackle glaze on the frames – small tins of emulsion in the background.

You can also see my Steampunk Clocks Mirror, now finished. In front of it, sitting on top of my mould-making box, is my new EasyMold Silicone Putty which arrived this morning – at last I’ve got my hands on a reasonable quantity of mould-making silicone putty at a reasonable price – Ebay, from the USA, so I’m now looking forward to getting on with some more mould-making. I’ve subsequently discovered another website (also in the USA) which sells similar stuff, a bit cheaper still, I think – and they’ve got some excellent video tutorials and other stuff on their website.

http://www.makeyourownmolds.com/

Following the fun breakfast picture last week, I thought I’d put in something I had for breakfast this morning. I peeled a perfect clementine, and as I held it up, the sun shone right through it, making it glow, which made me think it would make an interesting photo, so I shone my ARTHaven Anglepoise lamp through it, holding the camera with one hand and the clementine in the other. After a bit of photo editing in Serif PhotoPlus, I came up with this somewhat surreal result – not exactly on my workdesk but I thought you might enjoy it! After photographing it, I went back downstairs and ate it.

Happy WOYWW, everybody! Hope lots of you will come and visit me and leave comments this week – last week was a record for me – we all love comments!!

Altered Mirrors and Frames–Preparing the Backgrounds

After my first attempt in April, I am now going to do some more painted Ikea mirrors, and also some small Ikea frames which I’ve got from Ebay. We have got a harvest/flower show coming up at our church, and various people will be exhibiting and selling their work, and each artist has been asked to donate one piece to be auctioned to raise funds. I thought this was something I could do, and if they do not sell, I’ve got some ready-made Christmas presents! I originally bought the mirrors for Christmas presents anyway. I’ve got some more coming from Ebay, so I will have plenty in hand if these ones do sell.

I am intending to frame some of my small ATC-sized flower paintings that I did recently, in the small wooden Ikea frames, and I am going to paint those frames to co-ordinate with each flower painting. I’ve got 6 of these, and if they are successful, I shall look out for further packs of these frames on Ebay. It’s brilliant that so many people are selling Ikea stuff on Ebay, because we don’t have an Ikea anywhere near us, and it does mean we have access to the stuff!

These first three mirrors have been painted on the front and the back with white primer/undercoat.

They will be painted with black gesso and then grunged up and painted with my new rust effect, and some nice steampunk embellishments added.

I painted the other three mirrors with white gesso in the spring when I did my first painted mirror – I have since discovered that primer is a lot cheaper and will be using that in future, unless the subsequent treatment requires a gesso substrate. Here they are with two coats of dark-coloured emulsion paint, in readiness for a layer of crackle glaze and then a top coat of light-coloured emulsion.

I shall probably do daisies and/or ivy on the green one, harvest on the brown one and poppies on the blue one (that blue is actually a lot darker than it’s come out in the photo), adapting the flower designs I made for the ATC-sized cards.

These are the tins of emulsion that I bought to do the backgrounds with. I was thrilled that my hubby found a Dulux centre on a local industrial estate where they mix up any colour for you, in nice small pots (250 ml). When I had them mixed, he asked what I was doing with them, and when I explained they were for art, he was very interested. He told me that a customer had ordered two pots to be mixed and then had never come back to collect them, and he couldn’t sell them, so he gave them to me free! One is a lovely grey, and the other a very pale green, just perfect for my backgrounds!

The brown mirror is having cream as the top coat; the green one is having the pale green, and the blue mirror one is having grey.

On the extra mirrors coming from Ebay, I am going to do some textured gesso effects, and painting them with acrylics – a more abstract effect.

This is the brown mirror, with the addition of the crackle glaze, which is still wet at this point. If you spread it on nice and thickly like this (I used a foam brush and didn’t over-brush it) and going in one direction only, you get nice big cracks. You can see where the cracks will form, from this picture.

This is the dark green mirror with its top coat of pale green. I am very pleased with the large cracks that have formed, and I love the two colours together.

This is the brown one, with the addition of cream emulsion. Again, the cracks are very satisfactory.

Finally, the grey one. This grey is darker than I thought it would be, and if it hadn’t been a free one thrown in, I might have chosen a slightly lighter shade, but I think it’s come out OK with the dark blue cracks. It’s perhaps a more subtle effect than the first two.

When I was doing my flower paintings, I was delighted to discover that distress inks work really well on acrylic paints! I had thought that they wouldn’t, having experimented with them over gesso, which acts as a resist. The distress inks over the crackle glaze give a lovely subtle effect which really lifts the frames from the ordinary! I am so pleased with this effect! This is the green frame, to which I have added some Peeled Paint and Wild Honey fairly randomly over the surface, and then distressed the edges with Forest Moss. I used my Inkylicious Ink Dusters which worked brilliantly – you have to go carefully so as not to overdo the effect.

This is what I did with the brown and cream mirror. In this case, I added Wild Honey, and distressed the edges with Walnut Stain.

For the blue and grey one, I used Dusty Concord, and a very small amount of Wild Honey, and distressed the edges with Chipped Sapphire.

I am very pleased with how these three mirrors have turned out so far. As they have got water-based inks added, I think I shall seal them with some matt acrylic gel medium before doing the flower paintings.

As for the grunge mirrors, here they are with their coating of black gesso as a substrate for the rust effect which I shall be doing.

So far, I have only started working on one of these.

When I did my rust effect, I used some blue pearlescent liquid acrylic, which came out much too blue, and I decided I’d make up my own mix to resemble a verdigris effect. I achieved this using my Pebeo Deco Matt fluid acrylic paints in the following proportions, with the addition of some iridescent acrylic gel medium:

Cretan Blue: 2 parts

Antique Green: 2 parts

Lemon: 1/2 part

Iridescent acrylic gel medium: 3 parts

So far, I think this works pretty well, but I shan’t know until I progress a bit further with the effect, so I’m going to complete the first mirror before moving on to the others.

I have also made a few more moulds, using up the last of my Mold-n-Pour, using some nuts and bolts and screw heads, and a couple of clock hands that my dad lent me. When I manage to get some more mould-making material, I shall complete this with the remaining steampunk bits and pieces I’ve got, get them cast, and apply them to the frame before adding the rust effect, so that part of the project is on hold for the moment.

The next step is to start the flower paintings on the first three mirrors, and also to prepare the backgrounds on the small frames, which arrived this morning, and I haven’t yet photographed them.