Microwave Kiln and Glass Fusing

I have so many craft interests...and they seem to blend into each other constantly! For instance, I have a microwave kiln (MWK) that I've been using for a couple of years. I just found a Facebook group for them..! And I am learning so much so fast! I love it!

I found out there today that you can use mica powders, such as Pearl-Ex, on glass before it is fused! I found a very cool place to buy samples of mica powder very inexpensively...around a dollar a package! Here is the link.  Apparently some colors work better than others but I am so intrigued! I wonder if you can use actual eye shadows, too...Apparently the color doesn't always last through the heat but the sparkles do!

I've been using a Fuseworks microwave kiln for a few years now...I believe my first few experiments (above) were created in 2011. I find this FB group and have only read back a few weeks and already have learned so much that I was either doing wrong or didn't know were possible! Combing the glass while hot...using molds in it...mica powder..."hot pots" - now I learn that the crap I've been buying at Hobby Lobby is inferior and that there is another type of kiln paper that you can use that is much thinner than what I got at HL. (I am not endorsing this brand or these sites, they are links I got from the FB group!)

The cool thing about it for me is, that paper is thin and sturdy enough to be used with the Cricut! I've been using the thicker paper with paper punches and punching out shapes to use with my fusing, like the ones above - the hearts and the dragonfly, etc. But apparently you can sandwich this thinner paper between sheets of glass and LEAVE it there after firing..

I had seen the technique on a different fusing group that was for regular kilns (much larger pieces) with a group member who made a beautiful Valentines Day platter with Cricut cut kiln paper cutouts embedded in the glass. I wondered how you could do it with the thicker paper because I thought it would leave air between the sheets - but now I see it was with thinner paper. See how much you can learn on the internet? :D 

It's funny how my different interests end up tying together....much like life itself. I called this blog Karmic Confetti for a reason...I have many interests and try many different crafts. I have a Cricut, I do stained glass, I fuse, I play with polymer clay, I bead with what I make...you never know what I'll write about or show here! So stay tuned. ;) Thanks for looking! Make sure to stop by my Pinterest page and like my Facebook page! 

Polymer Clay Challenge

I recently joined several Facebook groups dedicated to polymer clay that I didn't know about before! There are a few that have weekly projects and while I have been unable to do all of them, I did attempt a couple that challenged me. One was for a 52 week caning site, and I saw a beautiful cane that I had not seen before and decided to try it. I have mostly done faux projects and some molding, but doing a cane with extruded shapes was HARD. Especially comparing mine to the beautiful example on the site! Here's the link if you are on Facebook and would like to join us! I don't know how to share the beautiful cane she made but this is my attempt at it.  The original artists name is Jessica Almqvist-nilsson. She posted a photograph tutorial showing how she constructed this cane. Since it is hers, and she shared it on Facebook, I am not going to share it here. You'll have to join the group to see it! :) (UPDATE: I found her Flickr page so here is a link to the pictorial regarding the composition of this cane!)

This cane is what happens when I get tired and my eyes stop working properly late at night. I did okay until it came time to reduce the cane into six pieces to make the shape in the photo. And once I get tired, i get less particular and less patient...I think one of the sections was actually a piece I was going to toss because it was the warped end. Sigh. But at least I learned a lot...which is true of most of our mistakes, right? 

For instance, I learned to budget enough clay the first time to make the entire project.  I used different types of clay, too - pearl and some was Souffle. Maybe that's why it didn't reduce nicely. Triangles are hard, though! I also usually use those clear blocks you put stamps on on the ends of my canes to reduce them and I couldn't find them - impatience again. 

I also had a big chunk left I was going to make either a pendant with or use to cover up the ding in my covered metal mint box (pictured below) and I left it in the oven too long and burned it. 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Sometimes, you should just stop, and pick things up the next day! 

Also next time I'll let it cool down before trying to cut it....and I am going to have to make one of those Lego slicers to cut any future canes! I wasted SO much cane cutting it unevenly by hand...

Thanks to Jessica for showing us this cool way to put a cane together! Like I said, I learned a LOT.

(UPDATE: Since I posted this, I found a new technique for reducing odd-shaped canes. If I had known about this I might have had an easier time reducing the triangular cane! Details here.) 

Thanks for looking! Make sure to stop by my Pinterest page and like my Facebook page! 

Polymer Clay and Beaded Yorkies

I've been back to playing around with clay again and I was making some hair for my little fairy faces (a couple of posts back) and had some Yorkie colored clay to fool around with and decided to try making one. I adore Yorkies...we have four of them! They such wonderful, fun dogs. Ours are not show dogs, by any means! They are far too active to have long hair but love to play in the pool when it's warm enough and although they are all getting older now (the youngest two will be ten this year!) and sleep a lot, they love to fetch a ball or a toy. 

Anyway, I had this leftover clay and my clay extruder and this is what I came up with. I think I'll try again soon and make a larger one, but I like the way this little guy came out. I used black glass beads for his eyes but the rest of him is entirely polymer clay. I used Primo "Jewelry Gold" and "Copper", neither of which looked like I thought they would, but they were still a nice color for a Yorkie. I used some antiquing on him, sanded some highlights into him, and then dusted some glittery black chalk on him after it was baked. 

His neck came out a little thick but he's my first try! :)

This is the last Yorkie I made, a little beaded guy. I adore this one. :) He's a pendant. She, actually, because she has a bow! I think I will make a clay bow on the next PC one I make. :D 

Thanks for looking! Make sure to stop by my Pinterest page and like my Facebook page! 

Bezels and Stringart

In my post yesterday, I touched on the subject of making bezels out of flat aluminum wire for polymer clay pendants. Pictured below are a few I have planned for the next time I want to make a polymer clay item...I'll use them to cut the clay out and it should fit tightly. Pictured with them is one of my fauxpals encased in a bezel. If I had planned it, I would have punched holes in the bezel and poked matching holes in the clay before baking. This one I just glued in. Using the wire in this manner makes a nice, professional, polished edge for the pendants. (UPDATE: I must have subliminally copied these ideas for my bezels below! Hers are SO much nicer though!)

The sun below shows how I used it to cover the edges of my back to back polymer clay faces. I retrofitted it, meaning the pendant was done but the edges were ugly, so I had to cut pieces of wire and punch holes so it would fit tightly around the wires holding the wire sunrays on the baked clay. I'm happy with the result. It's not noticeable that the black bezel is two pieces!

Now to get to the point of this post. :) I also tried the bezel technique around a previously made faux ivory/bone pendant that I wasn't crazy about the sides of, seen below. It really punched up the appearance of it. Gave it a nice finished edge. Then I tried something a little different..I used my metal punch to punch holes as evenly as possible along the edge of the bezel wire before bending it around the pendant (polymer clay with Lisa Pavelka foils on it, love that stuff!). I did not bother to glue the bezel to the clay this time because....

...I decided to wire wrap it instead. Sort of the old technique we learned in school where you used string and nails to make a picture...this time used to hold the pendant in place. It also held the bezel onto the pendant. As you can see in the photo above, the punch left jaggedy holes along the edge (I wasn't as careful as I could have been because I was experimenting!) and although I used a file on the edges, I was a little leery it would scratch or catch. But once the wire wrapping went on, it filled all the holes and covered the sharper edges, so it worked out nicely! The holes keep the wire from slipping. Next time I'll be more precise about hole placement!

Below is a different type of string art pendant I was making a couple of years ago. It is a pink fauxpal and I wrapped it by encircling it with a coil of wire and wrapping in between the coils. It takes a little practice but is a neat way to finish a pendant. Especially when you can find pretty pink wire to match your clay. :)

Hope you enjoyed this post and got some ideas from it for your own designs. Thanks for looking! Make sure to stop by my Pinterest page and like my Facebook page!  Later!

2014 Christmas Cards and Beaded Ornament Covers

It's been a while since I posted, thanks to Christmas and other household projects. But I've been making new things all along! I guess I'll start with Christmas!

I had never made any beaded ornaments before, but this year I was determined to make one! I had no pattern, I just saw a few on the internet that I liked the components of and combined them to make a couple that I liked. Love the little snowflake, they are very quick to make! Here is the link to the pattern, which is from a Russian site. The panels I made by looking at one similar and guessing it was brick stitch. :) The one on the right does not have wings! The wings belong to a wire fairy I made - behind it...for another post. :)

Then in the middle of my beading, I had to make my yearly Christmas cards! They weren't as involved as in other years but still took a bit to design. What do you think of the outsides? I have some wonderful embossing folders and had a lot of fun with them this year. The ones that looked like a reindeer sweater were my favorite. Middle right is one of them. Click the picture to enlarge! The metallic paper was cool...looked like metal when I was done embossing. Doesn't photograph too well though!

Here is a closeup of one card. I made the green patterned envelope to match the size of the card from some crappy Christmas scrapbook paper. I have stamped/embossed papers that are just a little ugly with some pretty glittery embossing powders before, but I decided to hold back this time! :) I cut the mats and used an embossing folder for the embossing on the white paper but cheated with the little ready made glittery chalkboard chipboard figure on the lower right. 

Here is the inside of the card! They all had a fireplace inside. Saw it on Pinterest where someone used a crimper to make the border of the fireplace look like paneled wood. Came out cute! (There are other examples of fireplaces like this on my Christmas Pinterest page!) Used another embossing folder to try to make the background by the fireplace look like wallpaper. Stamped the Merry Christmas over the fireplace. I used some kid's holographic large chunk glitter for the fire, and it sparkled nicely! I used a punch for the "doily" and cheated with stocking stickers - they were cuter than anything I could have made! I did break down and buy a die cut for the fireplace grate. I love 40% off coupons! I also used snowflake peel-off stickers from Hobby Lobby to decorate the card and some had this type of wreath - which is also a sticker - and some had a different type. I didn't use my Cricut to make this card, it was pretty easy to do the math since they were all the same. I just used a ruler and a blade to make the few cuts there were. 

Snowflakes were the theme for most of the cards. I used an embossing folder and some very old Christmas paper I'd been holding on to for a long time. Wasn't sure about using pink glittery snowflakes but I think the card worked, don't you? :) The "Season's Greetings" on the bottom right were a stamp/diecut set I had.

Another inside. This was the other type of wreath I ended up using. No doily on this one. 

 I liked this set of earrings, I made several. They feel Christmassy to me!

.

Now, on to more recent stuff. I've been playing around with my polymer clay again. I love making the bone/ivory canes! They look so beautiful when they're done right. And I've fallen in love with this one particular mold, which I like making into sun faces. You can see below the difference when the finished clay has not been antiqued! It really brings out their features. 

This is a recent sun I made, using one of the molded faces above. I love playing around with the faces after I mold them, before baking. On this one I only made it one sided but sometimes I sandwich wire between two of them so I can make two sided pieces out of them. 

I had a problem with the edges of some of the clay beads I had used the Lisa Pavelka Magic Glos on, and also when I had two suns that I wanted to meld back to back after baking (below). So I recently tried using this flat wire I found at Hobby Lobby (I've seen it at Michael's, too) as a bezel wire, as you can see in the photo. I glued a black one around my fauxpal in the photo below. I guess I could have done a better job with the seam! In the future I am going to bake them right in the bezel...this was my first experiment! I will also be able to drill holes to hang them by. I am going to use the others I made to cut out and bake the next clay pendants I make in so they'll fit perfectly. Has anyone else tried this? 

This sun is a good example of my bezel idea. I had two of the suns, which I glued together, but the sides showed, so I made a bezel that encased them both. So this little guy is two sided. :)

In the photo below, you can see the black bezel I made a little better. This is the other side of the one above.

While I was looking for my sun mold, I found a couple of other molds I had bought that were supposed to be for fairy and female forms. I wasn't fond of the fairy face but I loved the female one. Once again, it's fun playing with their features, although these are so tiny you'd need a magnifying glass and very steady hands! I had recently joined this cool Facebook group for polymer clay and saw someone using these intricate metal filagree plates to back a pendant and thought I'd try it with these flower filagrees. Love the butterfly one! They have a rather weird cast on some of them because I used pearl clay and it left a pattern on their faces, but I think it makes them look aged! Rather haunting, aren't they? Not sure if they should be pendants or pins...

Here is the butterfly one before antiquing. Big difference, huh! What a beautiful mold!

Another thing I played with was a contest I found, also on Facebook, on a DIFFERENT polymer clay group! I am so excited because Lisa Pavelka is actually a MEMBER and I think she's so talented! She has a different little contest every month - I just joined so they were doing a Valentine's Day Carmex jar challenge. I made the little doohickey below as a decoration for the jar but didn't use it. I made it from a clear rubber stamp! Once again, antiquing made a huge difference! Isn't it cute? It's only.about 1.5" square.

And finally, to end this long post! I made some of my sun faces into ladies. What do you think? Maybe a redhead? Brunette? Lol.

For some reason, this reminds me of the Les Miserables girl. :)

That's it for now! Look for me on Facebook. Karmic Confetti, or my Pinterest page! There is so much more there that I haven't uploaded here yet. Soon! Later!