Among the most prized pieces in my polymer collection are these bargello beads made by Laura Liska. I love the desaturated color blends and the rich texture she created by leaving gaps between the raised strips of color. I wanted to buy them all but my funds were limited so these are all I have.

Several years later, after Laura had stopped working in polymer, I tried to make my own. I wasn’t able to recreate the richness of her color blends nor was I able to manipulate those tiny strips of color (the round bead is just over 1 inch across and there are 15 tiny strips on it) without distorting them. Achieving Laura’s even spacing between the strips was way beyond my abilities (and probably still is) so I gave up.

Lindly Haunani and Maggie Maggio have done us all a great service by providing instructions for making these beads (with Laura’s permission) as a project in their 2009 book Polymer Clay Color Inspirations. Especially useful is the information on how to use “mud” to produce beautifully shaded color blends.

I returned to working with bargello designs when I started casting about for things I could do with Skinner Blends I already had on hand.  This time, after I stacked my blends I sliced the stack into very thin sheets and then into narrow strips . (Yes, I used my slicer.) I arranged these strips like fabric to create flat bargello patterned veneers to put on pre-formed pendant blanks.

The pendant on the left was my first effort.  It is a bit clunky looking but it clearly has a bargello pattern.  After that moderate success I decided to tackle a more complex pattern with thinner strips. My next two efforts are shown on the right Each pendant is a bit over 1 inch wide..

This is how I made the veneers. I started with a glass surface with a grid underneath it to help me line up the strips. Beneath the grid there was a sheet of white cardstock and beneath that four small blocks of blue ice to keep the work surface cool in my overly warm house.

Next, I laid out the cut strips on my glass work surface. Using a tissue blade (lengthwise) I lifted up one slice and placed it in a different area of my work surface, making sure it was very straight, lined up parallel to the grid and pressed down on the glass. I used my blade to pick up the next strip. (When I picked up the strip, I didn’t slide my blade entirely under the strip; instead I tilted my blade such that I was able to lift the strip by its edge with most of the width hanging off of the blade.) I lined up this strip (still on my blade) with the one on the glass, offsetting the pattern just a bit.  When the strip was in position, I tilted the blade so that the free edge of the strip was pressed against the edge of the strip on the glass, then released the strip with a rolling motion of the blade. The strip came off in the desired position but wasn’t quite straight so I pressed my blade against it to straighten it before adding the next strip.

After I assembled the strips for the veneer, I placed a sheet of waxed paper on top of it and rubbed over it with the back of a spoon to fuse the strips. I trimmed the edges then lifted the veneer with my blade and transferred it to a small piece of cardstock. I slid the veneer off the edge of the card onto the pre-formed (unfired) pendant blank, taking care not to trap any air bubbles. I burnished the veneer onto the blank and completed the pendant.

The picture above is a veneer in progress on my work surface. It is about 1 inch high. When I am constructing my veneers I try to offset each new strip from the one before it by an amount equal to the width of a strip. The zigzag patterns are created by offsetting the strips to the right for several strips then off setting the next ones to the left.

I will be teaching the simplest version of  a bargello pattern as part of my Introduction to Color Blending workshop at Shake Rag Alley School of Arts and Crafts, in Mineral Point Wisconsin on June 2, 2012.

Notice: My final 6-day workshop for the year will be in Racine, WI, in June. One registrant has had to cancel so there is a new opening for one person.

My workshop travel is finally winding down; I hope that means I’ll be finding more time to write this blog. A lot of the posts I write are for the benefit of my students. I try to expand upon (or repeat) information I’ve shared in workshops so the information will be available when their memories of the workshops have faded.  From the responses I’m getting it appears that a lot of other people are finding the information useful as well.  I’ll try to do better at keeping it up.

For those of you who don’t know, “caning” refers to the process of constructing a polymer clay cane. It has nothing to do with preserving fruit.  People often ask why I recommend certain tools for my caning workshops; here are some of the reasons.

I prefer to use a glass work surface because it is transparent and it is more resistant to scratches than plastic. I also like the weight.

I place a plastic quilting grid under the glass to facilitate measuring and lining up pieces of clay. The grid has 1″, 1/4″ and 1/8″ divisions.

In addition to the usual slicing blade I carry an 8″ floor scraper blade. I use this blade for scraping/lifting larger sheets of clay off the work surface if my regular blades aren’t long enough. It works best when the sheet is lifted using a swift, continuous pull of the blade. Look for the blades in your home building supply store. There are many brands. The blades come packaged individually or in multiples.

I have an acrylic roller that measures about 12″ long by 2″ in diameter. I find that much narrower rollers are more likely to leave indentations in the clay. This larger roller is particularly useful for reducing a rectangular cane. Rolling over the top of the cane helps even up the surface and square up the corners in addition to elongating the cane.

I also have a set of narrower rollers that I use to shape portions of a complex cane during construction. It is easier to insert a new component cane if the “receiving” area of the master cane has already been shaped to “accept” the component cane.  I use my acrylic rollers and rectangles to do this shaping. The rollers are in matching pairs and range in diameter from about 1/4″ to 1″.

Used in pairs, the rollers are perfect for forming “cusp-shaped” units of clay to fill in the gaps between cylindrical components. The filling keeps the round components from turning into square components when the master cane is reduced.

When it is necessary to join the edges of  two sheets of clay together (as when preparing clay for a Skinner blend), I place a deli sheet over the position of the seam and burnish (rub) the surface of the sheet gently with a bone folder (above) or the back of a spoon to close the seam. I do this every time I do a Skinner blend to make sure the pieces won’t split apart when the sheet is folded and fed into the pasta machine.

I find a pair of acrylic rectangles extremely useful for squaring up square canes and helping to shape triangular ones. I place them on opposite sides of the cane and press. The plastic should be thick enough that it doesn’t bow when you press against it. I have my basic set that I use most often, two rectangles approximately 3″ x 12″ x 1/4″, as well as some larger ones for working on larger canes. A single rectangle can be used to elongate and even out cylinders of clay (“snakes”) by rolling the cylinder of clay back and forth under the rectangle while pressing gently on the rectangle. Press too hard and the cylinder can come apart in the center and “deflate” like a flat tire.

A steel potter’s rib is nearly irreplaceable when it comes to lifting up very thin sheets of clay without tearing them. I store my sliced canes between sheet protectors and sometimes these very thin slices are quite difficult to remove, especially when they have been stored a while. A steel potters will often do the trick. Get the kind that is flat and has one straight edge.

This is just a reminder that I’ll be teaching my new mokume gane technique at Creative Journey Studios in Buford, GA (near Atlanta)  in just over a week. I’ve been experimenting with this technique for over a year and have only introduced it to the public in one workshop in Colorado (outside of my studio classes).

These  are just a few of the ways I’ve been using this technique.

The technique uses only metalic/pearlescent clay along with black, and occasionally white. I would have taught it sooner but Polyform made major changes in their line of metallic/pearlescent clays and I had to experiment all over again. It took quite a while to get used to the differences, but now I’m happy with my results.

 This workshop will focus on leaves, but as you can see, there are lots of other things on could do with the technique.

As an added bonus, we’ll be using my new polymer clay slicer!  Hope you can join me.  I won’t be teaching this workshop again until Europe in the fall.

Workshop Updates:

• There is one NEW OPENING in the RACINE Kaleidoscope Pendant Intensive. Workshop Details

This is a continuation of my saga with pendant cords that I started in my Nov. 25, 2011 post.  Part of the reason for sharing my problem solving process in such detail is to illustrate how something that seems quite simple and even obvious when demonstrated in a class can represent days or even weeks of experimentation by the instructor.

Before I started using window blind cord I used Soft Glass plastic cording. I liked it because most of the colors were somewhat muted like the colors in my pendants and I thought the frosted hollow cord looked rather contemporary.

I wanted the cords to be adjustable so I connected the ends with “sliders” I made from polymer clay. Each slider had one hole drilled part-way through it and a second hole drilled all the way through. The cord was super-glued into the short hole and moved freely through the second hole (below).

This type of closure is works successfully with buna; however I found that the glue caused the Soft Glass cord to become rigid and susceptible to breakage over time. (I have since observed that some artists bring the end of the cord all the way through the slider and tie a knot in the end.)

The picture on the left shows a variation on my Soft Glass sliders. I made tube beads and then sanded one surface flat on each bead. I glued the flat surfaces of two beads together to make each slider. I still had the problem with the glue, though, and on top of that the two beads sometimes broke apart. I still like the look of the cord and may return to using it for some of my pendants. I have an idea for a mechanical closure that would eliminate the need for glue.

Window shade cord turned out to be more difficult to work with than I had anticipated. It took weeks of experimentation to come up with the gracefully draped version you see on the right.  First of all, the cord ends fray easily. That and the softness of the cord make it difficult to feed the cord through the hole in a pendant almost two inches in diameter.

I tried stiffening the cord with glue, paint, varnish and other liquids with little success until I discovered that I needed to use the thinnest super (cyanoacrylate) glue available. Anything more viscous sat on the surface of the cord instead of sinking in. (The fastest setting cyanoacrylate glue is usually the thinnest.) I soaked the first 2-3 inches of cord with glue, let it dry and stiffen, then cut the end into a point to make a needle.

The next thing I experimented with was the sliders. I wanted them to be as unobtrusive as possible, which meant they had to be small, and I wanted to avoid using glue.

My solution after more experimentation was to roll out a sheet of clay matching the color of the cord as closely as possible, then punch out little ovals. Before firing the ovals I poked dots into the surface where the cord holes would go. After firing I drilled out the holes. The holes had to fit the cord exactly or the slider would be too loose to hold its position after the length was adjusted.

The final challenge was to come up with a way to finish off the connection without using glue. The solution, after I came up with it, seemed obvious. I pulled the end of the cord away from the slider, melted it with a candle and after it cooled pulled it up snug to the slider.

The melted cord-end appeared to be a small bead just a bit darker than the slider – an elegant solution to the problem!

]]> http://carolsimmonsdesigns.com/2012/pendant-cords-part-ii/feed/ 22 http://carolsimmonsdesigns.com/2012/hold-a-hummingbird-in-your-hand/ http://carolsimmonsdesigns.com/2012/hold-a-hummingbird-in-your-hand/#comments Tue, 03 Jan 2012 00:13:46 +0000 Carol Simmons http://carolsimmonsdesigns.com/?p=2879

Have you ever held a hummingbird in your hand? Well here’s your chance!

I’m so excited about my Birds and Clay Workshop in Arizona this May! I know there is a lot of interest because many of you are checking out the details each day.  Nevertheless I still have 4 openings, so I decided I should tell you a bit more about how special it will be.

Like all of my 6-day workshops it will be retreat style. You’ll spend six days living and working with fellow clayers without the distractions of ordinary daily life. Strong friendships have been formed (or strengthened) in every one of my 6-day workshops.

Breakfast and snacks are included in the lodging fee and we will be making our own lunches, so there will not be a lot of added expense.

This particular workshop is different from the others in that spouses or companions are encouraged to come and participate in the bird walks and other activities the area has to offer. We have a day-long birding trip to local “hotspots” with a professional guide planned just for them. Naturalists, hikers, birders, mineral collectors, history buffs and butterfly enthusiasts will find plenty of things to do. The nearby town of Bisbee has excellent restaurants, as well as galleries, a mining museum, and opportunities for rock hounding.

For relaxation Casa guests can stroll along the river, take a dip in the lap pool, watch hummingbirds at the abundant feeders, or sit in the courtyard with a glass of wine and enjoy the late afternoon light. Four spouses are already planning to come.

The pace of the workshop will be relaxed but designed so that you can become as deeply involved in polymer as you choose to be.  In addition to the instruction on techniques there will be a wide range of projects to choose from.  If you would rather spend your unstructured time learning about color, caning, or finishing techniques than doing projects, you can do that too. With only 8 students in the class, I can tailor it to fit the group.

You can read more about the daily activities for clayers including class and studio times, bird walks and hummingbird banding here.

Mid May is the peak of spring migration and an ideal time to bird in Arizona.  118 species, including many AZ specialties (list) have been reported in the area at this time of year. The Casa de San Pedro caters to birders and would normally be fully booked for this time; however, Patrick and Karl have agreed agreed to hold all 10 rooms in the Casa for us until early February. At that time I have to decide whether there are enough registrants for the workshop to be “a go.”  If you are putting off submitting your registration fee I encourage you not to wait too long. This opportunity could be gone.

NOTE: If you have friends who love the kinds of activities SE Arizona has to offer, 2-3 rooms will be available at our special rates for non-workshop participants. They will also have the opportunity to participate in the bird walks. Have them contact me for information.

"Inspiration Picture" with Color Swatches

UPDATE:  One of my readers, Anna Anpilogova, sent in these links to palette generators.  The are in the comments below but I’m repeating them here because they are so useful.  Thank you Anna!   http://www.colourlovers.com/photocopa, http://kuler.adobe.com/#create/fromanimage, http://www.colorhunter.com, http://bighugelabs.com/colors.php, http://www.palettefx.com/, http://jrm.cc/color-palette-generator/

Also the artist for this picture is G C Meyers

********************

This post fulfills a promise to some of my students. They were very interested in learning how to make color swatches in Photoshop but I didn’t have time to show them during my workshops.  I suspect others might be interested as well because if you have even a cursory knowledge of Photoshop (or Photoshop Elements) you can make color swatches to match a picture with very little effort.           Here’s how…

Fig. 1

Start Photoshop, then open up the file you want to work with by choosing File -> Open ->’Your File Name’ the top of the Photoshop screen (fig 1a).  Your file will open in your Photoshop workspace (1b). The first thing you will have to do is create some white space to hold your swatches. You can do this by selecting Image -> Canvas Size at the top of the screen (1c).

Fig. 2

This action will open a “Canvas Size” window. You are going to increase the canvas size for your picture so that there will be some white space around your image. There are 5 things you have to do. First, use your mouse to put a check in the box next to the word “Relative” (2a). This will enable you to specify how much space you want added rather than having to calculate what the final size will be. Next, use the 9-square “map” just below the check box to tell Photoshop where you want the white space to be added (2b.)  If you want the canvas to be spread evenly around the outside of the image choose the center square as the place where the image will be “anchored.” I would like my white space to be only on the right side, so I move the anchor one space to the left (2b).  Be sure to choose what color you want the canvas to be (2c). Next, specify how much canvas you want added. In this case I want 2 inches added to the right  so I put “2″ in the width and leave the height at “0″ (2d). Finally, click “OK.”

Fig. 3

The white space will appear in the specified location.  Draw a box where you want your first color swatch to appear by selecting the rectangular marquee tool on the Photoshop tool bar (3a), placing your mouse where you want the box to begin, and clicking and dragging the mouse to select a rectangular area (3b). Now go back to the tool bar and select the eyedropper tool (3c). The mouse cursor will become an eyedropper.

Fig. 4

Place the eyedropper over the image at the point where you want to take your sample (4a). Click the mouse button to take the sample. The color of the sample will appear in the color swatch box at the very bottom of the tool bar. (You may need to move the mouse around a bit and take several test samples before you get a sample that matches the color you observe in the sample area. This is an artifact of the eyedropper’s sampling area, something I won’t elaborate on here.) Next click the paint bucket tool on the tool bar (4b). The mouse cursor becomes a paint bucket. Place the spout of the paint bucket in the rectangle you selected for your swatch, click the mouse button and the paint will fill the selection area (4c).

Fig. 5

The swatch area will still be selected. (It will have moving dashes around it.) Just press the down arrow on your computer to move the outline to a new location (5a). Switch to the paintbrush tool and take the next sample. Continue until your swatches represent all the areas you want to sample (5c).  If your swatch outline disappears, you can reselect any swatch with the magic wand tool (5b), switch to the rectangular marquee tool and use your arrow keys to to move the outline to a new location.

If you try this I think you’ll be surprised to see how different colors look once you move them away from their neighbors!  BE SURE TO SAVE YOUR WORK PERIODICALLY.

I know some of you aren’t quite ready to pay the registration fee for a workshop and are tracking the number of remaining openings so I will be updating the table at the right with each post.

The slicer is now out and in use in the polymer clay community. About 12 people have them.

4" high student cane on slicer

We still have quite a bit of documentation to complete on how to assemble it, maintain it and use it safely, so at this time we are only selling to people who have seen a demonstration and had a chance to use the slicer under our direction.

Testing it out in my workshops has been extremely helpful and has led to several improvements.

Assembling the slicer

We are currently taking a couple months off from production to complete the improvements and enhance the safety features of the machine, as well as to work on the documentation.   We are in the final stages of the patenting process, which has taken up quite a bit of  our time (and money) as well.  (For the purpose of the patent we changed the name of the slicer to the “Simmons Polymer Clay Slicing System.”)

When the latest improvements have been completed and all of the documentation is ready we will start distributing to people on the list who haven’t actually used the slicer, in the order their names appear on the list.   At the rate things are moving this could be several months from now, but it will happen.

Paper-thin cane slices

Please understand that this is a part time effort for us and is not producing a profit, just an hourly wage for Craig.    If you are on the slicer list we will be contacting you to see if you are still interested in buying one.  We will give you an estimated delivery date and request a $200 deposit to confirm your order.  With recent improvements, the current price of the slicer is $750 plus $40 for shipping and handling. This includes a spare blade.

People have asked if we could make a smaller, less expensive version of the machine.  We originally set out to do that, but weren’t able to achieve the level of precision and flexibility that I wanted at that scale, so we decided to build this larger machine first. Eventually we would like to design a smaller version that could be produced by a manufacturing company at a lower cost.  Right now each machine is meticulously crafted by hand.

12/14/2011: Please note this CORRECTION to my post on Pendant Cords:  The cord I purchased was 1.8 mm, not 1.4mm (as previously stated).

WORKSHOP UPDATE: There are 3 openings left in the Georgia workshop and 2 in the Racine workshop. There are 5 openings in the Birds and Clay Workshop.

"Korean Embroidery" Necklace (1st Prize for Polymer Clay, 2008 Bead and Button Show)

6-Day Intricate Kaleidoscope Pendant Intensive (2 Sessions/Locations)

6-Day Birds and Clay (Intricate Cane Veneers) Workshop, Bisbee AZ

I’m getting a lot of invitations to teach one-day and even half-day classes and I can’t decide what to do about them. It seems to me that there are plenty of quick project-oriented classes and tutorials around already. I can teach short classes and people enjoy them, but what really satisfies me is helping people fill in gaps in their skills and understanding so that they can become better artists.

I feel this is my real strength as a teacher. I love to develop new techniques and share them with others but when I teach the techniques they are secondary to this broader goal. Similarly, I view projects as a way to put learning into practice, not as objectives in themselves.

There aren’t many opportunities for this kind of teaching in the polymer clay world. It is the kind of teaching one would expect to find in an art school, but art schools have yet to embrace polymer clay in their curricula.  Since each of us has been exposed to a different array of classes, tutorials and workshops in our journeys with polymer clay we lack a common ground of knowledge and skills. As a teacher, my way of dealing with this diversity is to keep my classes small, to try to understand what each student knows and doesn’t know, and to go from there. This takes time.

I believe many polymer clayers would enjoy and benefit from this type of instruction; however, the trend is toward shorter classes, especially at conferences.  My dilemma is whether to go with the trend or use my energies to develop another option, as I’ve done with my 6-day workshops. Right now, I’m trying to do both.

Addendum:  I think it would be great if there were a series of classes that ensured students would have specific knowledge and skills to serve as basis for future learning.  The classes could be taught by different teachers all around the country but they would have a common curriculum.

CORRECTION: 12/15/2011 The cord I purchased was 1.8 mm, not 1.4mm (as previously stated).

I’ve looked for years for just the right kind of cord for my pendants.  Most of the colored cords I’ve found have been too bright. I found some black cord but it didn’t look right because there wasn’t any black in my pendants. Other cords were too stiff, too shiny, or frayed too easily or had something else wrong with them.

Then I remembered that a number of years previously Jacqueline Lee had told me she used window blind cord for the pendants she sells in museums; she even told me where to get it: RW Rope online.  She said to ask for the “handy hundred” cord, which I did.  It is excellent cord but color availability varies because the the cord is ends from rolls used in a window covering factory  It comes in 4 diameters (I got the largest 1.8 mm) and the price is excellent. Unfortunately very few of the colors I was looking for were available.

I called the very helpful people at RW to see if other sizes and colors were available. I was told I could get cord in a wide variety of sizes and colors for practically nothing if I ordered a box of assorted ends from the cutting room.

So I did. The shipping cost almost as much as the cord. This is what it looked like when I pulled it out of the box. Some of the cord was on spools, some in hanks and the rest was in a huge tangle. I did get some very nice colors but they comprised about 2% of the cord in the box and I spent quite a bit of time untangling it.

Now that I had all this cord, I couldn’t just throw it away, so I decided to dye it. This wasn’t as straightforward as I thought it would be. The cord is made of synthetic materials such as polyester and most dyes will only dye natural fibers.

After quite a bit of research, I came across a company called Pro Chemical and Dye on the internet. They sell all kinds of dyes for various uses and one of them, called Pro-Disperse dye, comes in 12 colors and was just what I needed.

Its main drawback is that it is nasty stuff chemically.  It is necessary to boil the cord in the dye along with some other chemicals, producing fumes that that you don’t want to breathe.

Since it was midwinter and I couldn’t work outside, I turned the stove top area in my kitchen into an exhaust hood by surrounding the stove and exhaust fan with plastic sheets.

This worked pretty well.  I dyed cord of different colors as well as white cord and got a wide range of colors. Many of them were somewhat muted, which I wanted. Sometimes I redyed cord in a different color.

Once the cord was dyed, it had to be rinsed several times. Then I had to find a way to dry it. I settled for dropping it in piles of different colors on an old blanket.

Once the cords were dry I rolled them into hanks. I keep them in my studio where they hang on the wall in transparent shoe holders. They are a beautiful sight and I love looking at them. Visitors comment on the beautiful “wall art.”

The cords on the wall are sorted by color; this is about one-fifth of them.