Tuesday, August 14, 2007

3rd post today - not the start of a trend, I promise!





Lots of bits and pieces acquired today - in the post, this summer card from Becky, another CCRR piece to work on (but not until September, luckily, as I haven't worked on the two for August yet! - it's just early as the sender is going away on holiday), some polymer clay that I ordered off ebay to play with my face mould, and these little stamps, which weren't in the post, but rather in the supermarket in the kids' crafts section (always a good place to look for stuff). What I like about them is that they are very simple shapes, which means they should stamp fairly well on fabric (which often loses detail) and with thickened dye rather than ink pads (ditto with the detail). I also like that they were very cheap...




Later in the day the doorbell rang with a delivery from Amazon. After never finding a cheap price on the no 7 Harry Potter, I finally ordered it off Amazon, but to get free postage, I of course had to order something else. Hardship indeed, you may think! Anyway, this has been sitting on my wishlist for a while, so I decided to throw it in the cart. Now of course I'm torn which one I want to read first...

And, ta da, here's today's work - no sewing, but I did test out some of the polymer clay with the mould - not bad, though it will take some fine tuning. The gold clay, beside being a little more like glaring yellow than what I consider to be gold, I found quite sticky and hard to remove from the mould without damaging the detail of the faces. I don't know if this is the metallic element of it, or the clay itself - it was Fimo. The brown was Sculpey and came out much better. Obviously, I will have to do some more testing - maybe a non-metallic Fimo to see what happens. And the girls both want to make faces, as does my friend Cathi, who we are going to visit in Ireland next week, so I think I will acquire some more colours, perhaps at the Festival of Quilts this weekend - someone there will surely be selling it (ArtVanGo, perhaps - I intend to visit them anyway, for sure) and we can all play around in Ireland... But the good news is, the tiny faces are definitly of a size that can be used on postcards, so expect to see some postcards with faces at some point in the not-too-distant future.

Quick blog contest update - thanks to Kim and Shelina for comments - we are up to 32 names in the (metaphorical) hat.

4 comments:

Vicky said...

I haven't done clay before but I think I have heard that you can use cornstarch or baby powder in the molds to keep the clay from sticking but why not ask they lady that sent you the ones you have and see what she says? Vicky in FL

McIrish Annie said...

I love those little faces. maybe if you coat the inside with a cooking spray they would release easier. I don't know if that would change the clay or not.

they are adorable.

Teresa said...

What do you use for stamping on your fabric Kate? I have used Stazon previously, but have just read on the back of the pad that it's unsuitable for fabrics

Bimbimbie said...

Kate, those little faces are just brilliant, lots of character *!*