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!

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.

Faux Porcelain Sentiments

For a birthday card I am making, I am following a tutorial on the Splitcoast Stampers site by Shelley Hickox for faux porcelain. I haven’t got all the ingredients for this, so I am having to compromise somewhat.

The first step was to create the card pieces which were going to be transformed. In Inkscape, I have designed a set of nesting ovals, which can be found on my Skydrive – this was following an excellent video tutorial by Carolyn of the Inkscape Cutting Designs forum, using the Interpolation method.

From this nested shape, I selected two adjacent ovals, and duplicated them so that I ended up with this.

This file can also be downloaded free from my Skydrive.

I cut the set of ovals using Sheba, my Black Cat Cougar cutting machine, and stacked the three small ones together and held them in place with a dab of Pritt glue stick. I then lined up this stack with one of the larger ovals and again located it with a dab of Pritt. I embossed this in the Cuttlebug, using my No More Shims mat, with the following sandwich from bottom to top:

A Plate; ovals stack with large one uppermost; No More Shims mat; 2 B Plates.

This is what the oval looks like once embossed. It measures 2 1/4 x 1 5/8 in.

I removed all the small ovals, and replaced one in the recess, sticking it down firmly with Scotch Quick-Dry Adhesive, an excellent firm-holding wet glue. I used this same glue to adhere the rest of the large ovals onto the back, making sure the glue went right to the edges, thus forming a laminated oval, nice and thick and ready to receive the faux porcelain treatment. I could have set up Sheba to cut the shape out of mount board, which would save a lot of time and effort, but I would not have been able to achieve the embossed effect. You can also purchase die-cut mount board shapes which would do as well.

If I had got myself organised and learnt how to do print and cut (contour cutting) on Sheba, I could have done the next step a bit more efficiently, and cut the oval already printed, but since I haven’t, I created a sentiment to fit the embossed oval, using Serif PagePlus (my desktop publishing software), together with circles to mark the attachment holes, and printed it on 100 gsm paper. The font is Engravers MT, which I think matches the project quite well – this is the sort of font you see on real porcelain pieces. I cut out the printed oval slightly oversized, lined it up on the laminated oval and glued it in place, pressing down around the embossing, and then carefully cut away the excess to fit the laminated oval. At this stage I pierced through the circles to create holes, into which I will eventually fit a couple of brads. Of course, if I had used mount board, I would not have been able to print on this, and would have to have used a rubber stamp, or alternatively, set up Sheba with a pen to write the text – this is last option is definitely something to try!

As you can see, there are always many different ways to achieve the desired end result, according to what equipment and materials are at your disposal – just because one doesn’t have everything that a tutorial says you need in order to complete a project, it doesn’t mean you can’t improvise!

The correct order to proceed with the faux porcelain effect is to apply the crackle paint first, and then stamp on top of it with archival black ink, but I did not have a suitable stamp. Since I was using Clear Rock Candy Crackle Paint, not having any white, I thought this would work OK.

The crackle paint is applied in quite a thick layer, and left to dry. The thicker the layer of paint, the larger the cracks will be. Once cracks start to appear, it’s OK to speed up the drying process with a heat gun.

As the crackle paint was applied over white paper, the cracks didn’t show up that much, and because I wanted a vintage look, I rubbed a small amount of Walnut Stain Distress Ink over the surface once the paint was dry, and then cleaned it off well, leaving the Distress Ink in the cracks.

It was now ready for the UTEE treatment. In case you don’t know, UTEE stands for Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel. This is somewhat different from ordinary embossing powder in that it is much more granular, and thicker. You cannot stamp with it and expect fine detail. It can be melted in a Ranger Melting Pot and items can be dipped into it to coat them, or you can apply it over the whole surface of something, as I am doing with this project. Applying Versamark clear embossing ink over the whole surface, one can then sprinkle on the UTEE (or dip the piece into the pot of UTEE, which is what I did), shake off the excess, and heat it with a heat gun to melt the UTEE all over the surface. This gives a wonderful glazed appearance, enhanced by the addition of further coats until the desired effect is achieved. Being clear UTEE, the detail of my piece (the text, the cracks and the Distress Ink) all show through.

This is the setup on my table, ready for heating the UTEE.

Detail of the first coat of UTEE applied, ready for heating. If you look closely, you can see how granular the UTEE is – almost like sugar, and quite unlike ordinary embossing powder.

This is how it appears after heating. You can see where the light catches the edge, that it has a rather lumpy appearance, which subsequent coats will smooth out.

After each coat, I poked through the holes again, to keep them open, while the UTEE was still soft.

Here is the finished tile, after 3 coats of UTEE have been applied. You can see how the irregularities have been smoothed out, and it has a genuine, glazed look. With the Distress Ink in the cracks, it has a nice beaten-up, vintage look to it!

Looking at it at an angle you can see the glazed effect where the light catches it.

Edge on, you can see the thickness of the laminated card, and the embossing. The whole thing has warped slightly, making it somewhat concave – I had expected that the layers might fall apart as the glue heated up, so it’s not too bad. This was all a bit of an experiment in improvisation, not having all the ingredients listed in the original tutorial, but I think it’s turned out OK in the end.

Now to make a card to put it on.