Workshop Updates:

• The Kaleidoscope Pendant Intensives are FULL.  (Wait lists are available.)
• The Arizona Birds and Clay workshop was CANCELLED because the registration quota was not met by the cut-off date.
  

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/ 19 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

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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.

Bridget Downey's cane and her inspiration picture.

I learned so much from my 6-day workshops – I honestly don’t know who learned the most, my students or me. Some things worked out great and some I’ll do differently next time. However I returned home more convinced than ever that two basic precepts hold true.

First, the results are almost always gorgeous when students start with a source of color inspiration that really moves them. Lee Ann Armstrong was strongly affected by the colors that surrounded her on her trip to India. She chose the photograph below which she had taken herself for her inspiration. Wouldn’t her cane make a wonderful fabric for a sari?

Even when students don’t quite capture the colors in their inspiration pieces the colors in their canes harmonize and the results are beautiful.

Julie Samara (left) and Debra Davis worked across from each other at Maureen's and shared this picture between them. Their results, however, are uniquely their own.

It helps if the images used, whether on fabric or paper, have shaded colors rather than flat ones. Notice how the shapes in the picture above appear flat but have a lot of shading that is reflected in these canes.

Peggy Keyes used this photograph of a bowl of currents as her inspiration. Her cane captures the softness of the colors in the picture.

Second, starting from primary colors and mixing the rest produces more beautiful colorways than working from a wide range of package colors.  All of the canes from these workshops were created using only primary colors and white with the occasional addition of black, or a neutral such as brown or ecru to modify the colors.

The shapes, images, and thematic elements in the inspiration pieces often find their way into the canes as well, as is clearly the case in the picture below.

Cane by Pat Ghadbane and the Laurel Burch fabric that inspired it.

Cane by Beth Ackley

I’m finally back home after several weeks of traveling and teaching. I’ll be writing about my teaching adventures as well as other topics in upcoming posts. Both Maureen Carlson’s Center for Creative Arts in Jordan, MN and Shake Rag Alley School for Arts and Crafts in Mineral Point, WI were wonderful venues for teaching.

Cane by Laura Blakely

While I finish unpacking, you can read about the workshops and see more pictures in some of the students’ blogs. (Cynthia Blanton just finished writing about about her Shake Rag Alley experience and Julie Samara has written about her time at Maureen’s.)

Cane by Debra Davis

My Facebook page also has lots of images from my 6-day workshops. By the way, I picked the canes on this page for their striking color combinations. They are all gorgeous!

My posts are going to be short and less frequent over the next few weeks as I move into a series of workshop/retreats that involve a lot of travel. Next week I’ll be at a mountain retreat center with many of my polymer clay friends. I’m excited to be leaving everything that has to do with kaleidoscope canes or bright colors at home with my husband while I work in 3-dimensions with wire and earth tones.  Shortly after that I’ll head to Minnesota and Wisconsin to teach two 6-day workshops.

Two weeks ago Nettonya Ryane brought this gorgeous fabric to my Snohomish workshop for her color inspiration. It reminded me why I love to walk through fabric stores even though I dislike sewing. I have to admit I own several boxes of fabrics just so I can look at them and touch them. I find fabrics extremely sensuous not only for their colors and designs but also how they drape, how they catch the light and how they feel in my hands.  Beautiful or interesting objects that awaken multiple senses are particularly inspirational for me.

This is the cane Nettonya constructed using her fabric for her inspiration. The Premo primaries she used were fuchsia, zinc yellow and ultramarine. She used ultramarine rather than cobalt blue in order to capture those deep, rich purples and violets. The only other colors she needed were black and white. Nettonya gave me some slices of her cane to make some kaleidoscope designs. I’ll have to wait until things slow down a bit to work with the actual clay. Meanwhile I satisfied myself by  scanning one of the slices and making kaleidoscope designs on my computer:I made these kaleidoscopes by a somewhat laborious process in Photoshop. If you would like to play with kaleidoscope images of your cane I suggest you download the trial Kaleider application from http://www.whizical.com, which will allow you to do that and much  more. It has been one of my favorite toys for years. (Warning: The home page will drive you crazy.) Here is a Kaleider design made from a photo of Nettonya’s cane.Unfortunately, the Kaleider software is for PC’s only. It has lots of “bells and whistles” that take a while to get used to, but once you understand it, there is no end to what you can create. You can even take snapshots of your favorite designs.