Polymer Clay Surface Design Recipes used on a Skull Necklace

It's time to mix it up!

Polymer Clay Surface Design Recipes
100 Mixed-Media Techniques Plus Project Ideas
By
Ellen Marshall

Regardless of your level of experience with polymer clay, the techniques and recipes for creating for combining clay with other media will inspire you to create unique surface designs. In addition to covering basic polymer clay techniques, tools, and materials, this book teaches you to use unique surface embellishments in your work.

Styled as a recipe, each illustrated surface design is shown with complete instructions for replicating the design and is accompanied by three variations. Informative explanations of specific inks, paints, and powders are included, along with a section dedicated to showing complex design combinations.

This book covers a range of topical application processes that include stamping, painting, and writing on clay along with step-by-step project ideas that put these techniques to use. A gallery of polymer clay art is included for further inspiration.

Ellen Marshall has worked with polymer clay for more than a decade, and has been teaching her techniques for four years. Her work has been displayed at an exhibition produced by Donna Kato and Van Aken International, and in the studio and fabric store of Lonni Rossi, a nationally renowned fabric designer and quilt artist. Ellen lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

So I totally savored every morsel of these recipes, got out my trusty pasta machine and got cookin'!
But not in the traditional sense, no not me, I mixed it up a whole bunch.

In Monday's post there were links to other crafty bloggers and I not only post them, I read them.

So over at The Impatient Blogger The Impatient Crafter Margot Potter made a cheeky video tutorial on making UTEE glittered skull jewelry.

I loved it!!!

But I saw these two pages in Polymer Clay Surface Design Recipes

(Click on images to enlarge)

and so I thought I'd cast a skull the way Margot did but with polymer clay and try some of these surface recipes out on the skulls.

I grabbed a skull and molding compound and mixed it up.

I pushed the skull into the molding compound and let it set up.

I then cast a bunch of skulls with white polymer clay and then taking a bit of inspiration from

page 53- use embossing powder to decorate the clay

combined with the technique from

page 35- to paint the textured clay to bring out the design.

I brushed embossing powder on parts of the skulls to bring out the design.

To make it easy to use these in jewelry making I cut about a one inch piece of wire, formed a loop on one end and curved the other slightly and poked it through the clay skull before baking.

I then baked them as indicated.

Then to make the necklace I grabbed this old earring that I had lost one of and some chain.

And this is what I made!

Here are two I did in gold. The one on the left I dry brushed with some black paint over the gold.

I hope you'll get some inspiration here and bake up some bling of your own.

Comments

[Margot]

FABULOUS! I love this sort of organic creative flow, that's the way it should be! Your project rocks!

Thanks for the Linky Love!

xoxo
Madge

[Cyndi L]

Very very cool application of these techniques!