Skull & Bones Polymer Clay Pendants

Its been a busy week again have gone back to school and we get used to the routine again.

So I've been adding some new items to my Etsy store and adding some final touches to some pieces that have been waiting to be finished.

My Skull & Bones Roller from Old Spitalfields Market

With Halloween not so far away I thought I'd show you some new pendants I made using a perspex skull & bones roller I purchased quite a while ago from a lovely stall at Old Spitalfields Market.

Skull Pendant with Swarovski Crystals made from polymer clay by Lottie Of London

Skull Pendant with Swarovski Crystals made from polymer clay by Lottie Of London

It took a while to get the pattern how I wanted and I coated the pendants with some Lumiere paints to give them a more old and rustic feel and to finish and make them really stand out I added some of those Swarovski hot crystals I've been playing with lately to the skulls eyes, the Topaz colour really make the pendant stand out while the jet black crystals are a more subtle finish.

Skull Pendant with Swarovski Crystals made from polymer clay by Lottie Of London

Have a great Monday Everyone and don't forget to check out more great crafter's over on Handmade Harbours Handmade Monday

Faux Lampwork Glass Beads with Liquid Polymer Clay

As some may know before discovering polymer clay, I was very keen to try glass lampworking,  alas in my tiny apartment it was not to be and so I discovered polymer clay in my quest for making beads.

Well it is possible to imitate lampwork glass beads using liquid polymer clay, if you search the internet you may find tutorials and projects limited for this technique and having tried it once before myself and failed I can see why, its very tricky and fiddly though the clayers that have perfected this technique the results are amazing.


I am going to use a project from my book Polymer Pizzazz by Bead & Button.  The project is Grapevine Beads by Carly Seibel and uses translucent liquid clay with oil paints, its also worth noting that this method uses a different technique in that the oven is used rather than a heat gun.

For this project I'm not going to be doing the grapevine as specifed in the project I'm going to try some poppies instead.

Translucent Liquid Polymer Clay TLS

Its important to mix only a small amount of liquid clay with a fair amount of liquid clay in the desired colours you will be using, as I am going to be doing a poppy design for me this will be red, black and two shades of green.

My acrylic painted background sheet on polymer clay

My background sheet used to cover my bead bases was painted and decorated using Lumiere acrylic paints.

My polymer clay beads bases are wrapped in my background sheet

Once dry i covered my bead bases and shaped them into the bead shape I wanted to use, in this case ovals they are cooked for the time recommended for the clay you are using.

My polymer clay beads are painted with the TLS & oil paint mix

Once the beads are cooled they are ready to be decorated with your liquid clay and oil paint mix, here is my decorated beads almost complete











And here are my final finished beads the two smaller beads did'nt quite turn out right and the flowers where too close together.

My faux lampwork beads with polymer clay

My finished larger focal bead, its worth pointing out here that once you add the varnish to the beads it really does add to the appearance, also my photos have been lightened considerably to show you the effect, the beads are actually quite dark.

My faux lampwork focal bead with polymer clay

This is a great technique for achieving the faux glass lampwork appearance with polymer clay though possibly more suited to an advanced clayer and those who are familiar with liquid clay.  Personally I feel the beads came out too dark, this I believe is to do with the black background I used, with better planning of colours and a white background the end results could be quite different.
 
If you would like to learn this technique with the full detailed tutorial instructions please refer to my resource list below, I would highly recommend this technique as its a great one to learn and once you do and have the time you could really plan to create some amazing beads.

I have a couple tips if you are going to try this project.

• Make sure you use the smallest amount of oil paint to liquid clay as it will only cause problems when cooking and not dry properly.  The balance is very important as I found out with my lighter shade of green.
• I would highly recommended when taking on this project you make sure you are undisturbed, get rid of the kids and any other disturbances that will distract you from this project it is time consuming and requires your full attention as I unfortunately found out when I had to start preparing dinner.

Resources

• The book Polymer Pizzazz by Bead & Button Magazine
• The Grapevine Necklace Tutorial available as download from the Kalmbach Bookstore

This post is part of Handmade Monday with Handmade Harbour Pop on over to see more great handmade blogs

Lumiere Paint on Polymer Clay

Jacquards Lumière Paint 

I finally got round to ordering myself some Lumière paints for my polymer clay, I've had my eyes on these gorgeous colours for quite sometime and once they arrived it dawned on me that I don't actually know what Lumière paints really are.

Jacquards Lumiere Paint - Exciter Pack

 What are Lumière Paints

Well turns out they are acrylic paints, Lumière paints are a range of paints that are metallic or pearlescent in colour.  They appear quite thick and are said to 'brush on like butter' and have been designed not to spread unlike alcohol inks.  They are also usable on many types of surfaces such as silk , fabric, paper, leather, wood and of course polymer clay.

Testing Lumiere Paint on Polymer Clay

I am using the Jacquard Lumière Exciter Pack and tested each colour on cooked and uncooked strips of clay to test application and check for colour difference, I also tested on both black and white clay to see the difference in colour.  The drying time for these samples was quite quick, most where touch dry within 30 mins, I expect this will vary depending on the thickness of application.

Uncooked Clay Application

Uncooked Clay Application - testing Lumière paints

Cooked Clay Application

Cooked Clay Application - testing Lumière paints

As you can see there is no difference in the colour when applied to either cooked or uncooked clay, some of the paints really stand out on the black clay.

Lumière Paint & Polymer Clay Project

This project comes from the Polymer Pizzaz - 27 Great Polymer Clay Projects by Bead & Button called Painterly Polymer by Dotty McMillan.

Lumière paint application on 3 clay sheets

I decided to stick to similar colours as those used on the project photos, and took the opportunity to test the application using three different methods   

1. Far left was created using the coarse side of a sponge.
2. Middle application was created using my finger 
3. Far right application was created using a sponge

For my project sheet I settled with the sponge application below

Lumiere paint on polymer clay sheet

 After allowing to dry I stamped onto the clay sheet using a black ink and a small decorative stamp, which was hard to distinguish on the sheet due to my initial colour choice of paints.

Lumiere paint on polymer clay beads

 Again after allowing to dry, it was time to make the beads for the project and this is unfortunately where I ran into problems.  Each bead I made would crack, despite my reducing the centre to a smaller side when it came to sealing the edge together it would still crack, I do think this is because the paint had somewhat dried out the clay making it less flexible a way around this maybe to make the beads first, even cooked before the paint application is applied.

And so I scrapped them so that I could use the remain sheet to have an experiment and play around.  Heres what I made

Lumière paint on polymer clay pendants

 I created some pendants with the remaining sheets and painted some Lumière paint onto the clay directly, much like its description says as the paint is quite thick and does not spread i was able to create this dotted pattern along the length of the last pendant.

Painting on polymer clay with Lumiere paint

Painting on polymer clay with Lumiere paint

You can see above I had a little play with some other colours and wanted to try out some simple painting with the Lumière paints

 

My Conclusion

Much like my first experience with alcohol inks, I've not been greatly overawed with the results from this project, I do think this could be due to my colour choice, it is too muted for my taste and I was disappointed that the beads cracked when I tried to put them together however little test with painting  holds promise and a few other tests I'd like to do are to see if a crackling effect can be achieved and also to try with metal leafing and foils.

 

Can You Help

I spent a lot of last night googling many pages trying to find projects or even links to others experiences using Lumière paints, but my hunt was somewhat fruitless.  If you have covered or now of someone that has wrote about Lumière paint and polymer clay but not excluding the paints other applications such as silk, wood and paper, I would be most grateful if you could share you links.  I think it would be great to see what else this paint is truly capable of, Thanks.