In The Studio
 I mentioned in the newsletter that I had been playing with Faux Dichro and I wanted to share some of the results of the learning process with you. I don't get a lot of "play time" so when I do, I try to learn as much as I can in the short time that I have to sit down and actually play around with new products and new techniques. Eventually my playing will result in learning something that I can put into practical purposes and end products that others might enjoy as well. |
The pieces that you see here will never make it out for sale - at least not in the shape they are in now, but maybe some day I will do something with them to clean them up and make them presentable. The purpose of this exercise was to learn how to use the new toys that I got so excited about purchasing. There are two different things going on here. One is called Liquid Glass and the other is experimenting with Dichrofex acrylic paints. |
  It seems that when I start to play with something, I have to make a huge mess with it first before I begin to refine things. I am not good at reading instructions or directions so my initial results are usually oversized, crude, and generally a waste of my materials. However, when I am working like this, it helps me to just get my hands in there and make my mistakes and do whatever I feel like doing to get a working knowlegde of the materials. |
In the Faux Dichro - which is billed as opals on steroids - the idea is to try and recapture the look and brilliance of dichroic glass. Dichroic glass is a beautiful glass with brilliant colourful foils deep inside of it. I had the priviledge to be next to a woman who did the real thing at the Melbourne Fall Art Festival and we talked for a bit. Her glass work was gorgeous and time consuming to create. Not to mention, extremely expensive to create. |
  I can't see myself changing directions and getting into glass work due to the fact that I enjoy the clay so much and had to pick a medium and stay with it, so for me this is the next best thing. These pieces are built around a single piece of stained glass scraps that I had picked up from another friend and have had sitting around for a year. I decided that they laid the best background for what I wanted to play with and they would give me variation in colours. |
The glass is built up with clay for a base and then baked. Once they are baked, they are varnished and rebaked and then varnished again as if I were finished with the piece. After they are dry I move them onto the next phase which is to add the opal portion of them. They are coated with Liquid Glass and then odds and ends of iridescent materials are added to them to build up a design. This is the part that is purely experimental and since I have no experience in it, the results are totally unexpected. That can be half fun and half frustrating. |
  I lay down an initial colour layer and then more Liquid Glass and then more materials and then more Glass until I am either sort of satisfied or run out of room to put more things in there. I have spent the better part of 6 weeks collecting different materials at different locations to add to these things and definately am using items that were never originally intended to be used in this way. The end piece is left to cure - depending on how much glass I added, cure time can take up to a week. Then I revarnished the entire piece. These are just scrap learning pieces but I am happy with the materials that I have collected and very interested in pursuing this to refine the look I am after. Sooner or later, I will be able to offer a few for sale. Until then, these will be tossed in the "what was I thinking" can. |
These earrings were done entirely differently - these were created using a lot of translucent clay and a lot of pearl and iridescent acrylics to get the colour. My translucent top layer is too thick for my tastes so these have been baked three times over and then varnished 4 times to try and bring out the acrylic that was under a layer of clay. I don't know what will become of these as they are very large and chunky pieces but I may add a turquoise coloured bead to them and put them out at the shows to just see what the reaction is to them. |
 I hope you enjoyed your little mini tour into my studio which consists of every room of the house and at least 6 feet of the garage. I will keep working on these techniques as time allows and I have a lot of different ideas of how to use them and what products I want to produce with them but I do not think I will have anything completed by the end of the year. It is my goal to get more delicate and fanciful designs which will mean I will need to do a lot of planning before I start the pieces instead of my dig in and worry about the results later attack that these pieces represent. I also need a lot more time to learn how to use the materials in a way that satisfies me as opposed to having the raw materials dictate the way that the piece turns out. As you can see, there is a lot of experimentation and a lot of playing that can be done and even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile! ~Julie |
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Blue Morning Expressions is owned and operated by
Bill and Julie Cleveland
in Florida and licensed with the state of Florida.
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FL Certified 15-8013129190-2 7/16/04
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Red Hat Mama ™ BME
Proud Members of National Polymer Clay Guild
Founding Member of the Treasure Coast Clay Guild
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