Red Roses, cause its almost Valentine's Day

Hi Everyone,

Hope you are all happy and content in your worlds.

Myself and Dr. J. have just returned from a few days out in our camper van, to the coast, and I am feeling very content because of it. I love the sea, in fact all water, and since we live in the centre of England more or less I don't get to see it as often as I'd like. So we combined a trip with some work Dr. J. needed to do and had a very nice relaxing time.

Finishing touches

Good Morning Internet Lovelies

So this post will just be a round up of the rest of the wedding items, starting with the top half of my dress. I made it fully steel boned with a corset style back so that I didn't need to worry about underwear as it was supportive in itself.

18 and counting

Good Morning All

Hope you are all well.  It's 18 days here till our wedding and I have only had 1 panic so far, which I think is quite good. I am on schedule with most things, thankfully, but there is always the unexpected. Like yesterday when I went to roll the marzipan out for the fruit layer of the wedding cake, only to find that my rolling pin has gone missing. I search everywhere, Dr J. had joined in and even my daughter had a look when she came in from work. There is no sign of it anywhere, so today it's of to the shops for me to buy another one. 

canning the canes

Morning lovelies,

well you know I said that this post would be finishing off the 1916 skirt, well 'fraid not.  I have run out of medium weight interfacing.  For those not into sewing that is the stuff that gives more support to certain areas, usually waistbands in skirts and infact in this case the waistband and belt. The rather annoying thing was that I discovered this on the day I had just been (note past tense) to the material shop. So since I am not planning on going again just yet that project is now on hold.

I'm still itching to play with clay though, so I'm not so disappointed and I've plenty of time before the 1916's outfit is needed (August 3rd watch it roll round before I know it, and on that subject were did June go? has anyone else felt that it was just a blur??)

2 of the shoe boxes from inside the large storage box

But on to the canes, well there's a box that has sat unopened in the sewing room since before the move and much much longer in truth as we spent every spare minute here renovating for at least 6 months before the move, and now that I think about it much longer than that as I broke my pasta roller,  (A really useful tool in the polymer clay world, but never use it for pasta once it has tasted clay.) and I was waiting for one for a Christmas pressie before doing any new clay things. Then as with buses, I was given two!, not that I've ever been give a bus, you understand, they just travel in twos. And so there was the wait before Christmas and then nothing after till very recently.  But about the box, it's some, and I say 'some', of my jewellery making stuff, anyone into crafts will understand, these things take over every storage space. And it hasn't been opened in along time, so today,   I thought I would take a look and see what actually was in it and I found some old canes, along with lots of other interesting bit and pieces, like dolls hair and my baby anvil and lots of glitter.

This was something to do with an old computer that long since died, and might make a very good circle cutter once dissected.

Back to the canes, there shouldn't be a shelf life to polymer clay in general. You knead it to start with and then it is workable and it stays like that for quite some time. Only when you're talking a long time as I often am between projects and the like (years rather than months) it doesn't really.  There's no water evaporation so it doesn't harden in that respect, no if kept cool and dark it should keep forever. If too hot it can start to bake, but here in England I've never found that a problem. No the problem I have is leaking plasticiser, the stuff that makes it soft leaks out over time leaving your clay hard and crumbly. Old clay can be reworked and with a hell of a lot of kneading become kinda usable but it never really binds well so if attaching different colours together a liquid clay is a real help. Or you can buy a substance for working into the clay to recondition it (rather expensive for a small bottle) or you can use baby oil, need it in well, wash your hands, they will be covered in the colour of the clay and then you are good to go.

Well how about canes. I have all these canes and you can't re-knead them now can you?

Firstly for those of you that haven't the foggiest of what I'm going on about, canes are like sticks of rock that you have built up out of different colours of clay to make a picture or pattern that runs down the centre of the whole thing. They are great, cause you can make them big and then roll out the clay to a really thin sausage and the picture will still be intact through the centre. Then you slice bits off and the thinner you cut the more pictures you get out of your cane. which could explain why I still have lots of little 'ends'.
But can I still use my canes?

Well apart from being really mucky around the outside as a result of loads being stuffed into the same bag and bits of different canes sticking to other canes, they seem ok, still soft enough to squidge down in size and still able to stick to a surface when applied. So I'm good to go and know what I'll be playing with later, so I best sign off now and get on with some of the stuff I need to do before I can play. Till next week.

Hugs and Kisses

Ally

steampunking a mini topper without using gears

Morning All

Just thought I would take one of my little top hats and give it a steampunk makeover today, but not by adding any gears.  There's a song I've heard on youtube called 'Just glue some gears on it and call it steampunk)' by Reginald Pikedevant that's quite appt in this point, I don't want to create something that is just jumping on the bandwagon and not really creative.

So gears are good but only when productive, that is to say there is a viable use for them on an object so how do I get a steampunk look without them?  Well what does Steampunk mean to me? that is to say what does it make me visualise? ok ladies in lovely corseted gowns, Victorian or the like, decorated in lace and pretty things, but practical, able to go adventuring in any deep dark forests or alien landscape without breaking a heel or tearing a hem, and even if they did they would soon find a way of mending the forsaid item.

So I am going for elegant but maybe slightly over-the-top as most of what I do veers that way, I'm not and have never been a wallflower in dress. And I think that anyone going for in for steampunk will be looking for something to show off, not hide away, they will be people used to being looked at and commented on.

But anyway, on with the decorating;

I decided that a bit of fleur de lis would look rather grand and got out an old lump of polymer clay and a fleur de lis rubber mold.  Rubber molds are great, most of mine came from when I was decorating cakes more regularly, but are now in the polymer box, and there is no going back.  If you do use something with polymer clay it can't be used for food stuff again.  Nasty stuff if you eat it or bake it too hot, poisonous either way.  So if I wanted to mold icing, the original reason I bought most of these molds, I would have to go and get new ones. This is unlikely though, apart from my own, I can't see me making anyones wedding cake in the near future.  So after preparing your clay, push it into the mold

and gently using a sharp blade cut off the excess 

So you get something like this, don't worry if it's not too neat

and then with the beauty of rubber molds you can just flex the mold and pop the clay out.

Because I was planning on decorating a round hat with these I wanted to bake them with a curve to their backs so put them on the outside of a bowl, if you just gently press they should stick down easily.

Then came painting, I do love blue. Obviously you could just use clay the colour you want, but I was just using up old scrap clay, I used metallic acrylic paint in 'sapphire'  

and just a touch of rub'n buff in antique gold to highlight the edges, the one on the left before rub'n buff and the one on the right is after, so you can see it's just a light touch.

Then I stuck them round the base of the hat crown and decided not to put them on the opposite end but around the top instead, so those ones could have been flat baked, but still looked ok.

These lovely little birds started off white too, I think they might be for weddings, but now they can sit pride of place on this hat.

And as a last touch, a small homage to my favourite book, Alice through the looking glass, a polymer clay clock with a twist, if you look closely you will see that the numbers go the wrong way, and I know the mad hatter was down the rabbit hole in wonderland, but there is a competition running at the moment in a facebook group called the mad hatter's society:
'2014 MHS Mad Hatter's Hat Interpretation Contest'

take a look if you fancy getting involved, it needs to be a top hat of any size, that is an interpretation of the Mad Hatter's. And you can enter up to 3 hats, so you will be seeing more from this. I will put up a post in the future about the clock if anyone is interested.

Well there we go the finished article, hope you like it, and it will be going up in the shop shortly.
So that's all for now.

Hugs and Kisses

Ally

making a tentacle

Good morning all you lovely internet users.

A real quickie today I'm afraid as there is much brewing here in the honey pot, ooh brewing in a honey pot would that make mead??? So I haven't much time to blog this morning, but I have had a number of people asking about the octopus tentacles, so I thought I would quickly pop up some pictures of the making of a tentacle.

I will fill you all in soon as to what all the goings on are but for now all I can say is that I'm starting to think about a giveaway to mark reaching 100 likes on my facebook page, and I hope to announce that early next week.

But in the mean time a quick tour of tentacle making;

Polymer clay needs kneading a lot to make it work nicely and to make it easier to knead it really needs warming. So pop it in your jeans pocket or place it close to your heart and forget about it for awhile. (I do know a number of ladies that warm theirs in their bra, and it works.) Then once warm, knead really well, boring may be and possibly tough on your hands (although if very tough then it's not been warmed enough), possibly watch telly during this bit and breaking it up into smaller bits to be kneaded individually and then putting back together helps too. Ohh and another thing to be aware of is this stuff is nasty, don't be eating at the same time and put it in your mouth by mistake, washing hands before eating after handling polyclay is always advised.

Well for the tentacles I used a bright pink that I had mixed up for another project and was left over. Another nice thing about this stuff is that if you can't buy the colour you want you can usually mix something fairly close with the colours that are available. I knew I would be painting the hardened clay but thought that there would be a possibility to use the pink too.

I broke off a small amount and rolled in out thinning slightly at one end, and then flattening the tip of the thinner end more.

 Then I took a very small bit and rolled this out to into a very small thin sausage shape.

 Taking a sharp blade I sliced small discs off this smaller sausage shape.

These I rolled briefly to soften the edges and then placed in a row down one side of the tentacle.

Then taking a darning needle or similar shape point I pressed an indent into each disc, giving the shape of the suckers, and if you are planning to hold the tentacle in place with wire or the like it's a good idea to put a hole through where you want it now.

Arrange in a life like manner and bake carefully following the instructions on the packet, which can vary for different types, so I'm not putting them down here.

By using pink I was able to keep the inside of the suckers pink (a place that would have been very hard to paint) and hopefully added more depth to the model. Hard to see on the photos I'm afraid.

Well I covered the painting briefly last time and there is lots of this stuff on youtube so unless asked I'm not going to bore you going into that, so here's the finished effect.

Well that's all from me fr now, till next time keep well,
Hugs and Kisses

Ally

Steampunk octopus and a paint job

Morning all

Well if anyone follows me on Instagram you'll know that I managed to get the hat proportions right for the riding hat I was after which I have to say I was quite pleased with, so I wanted to decorate my first one well and since I'm all about the steampunk at the moment, I wanted to give it a steampunk feel but without the goggles or cogs.  So a little bit of thinking brought me to octopus or octopi (is that better grammar).  I'm not sure why steampunk and octopi are so well linked but they are, definitely more so than whales or sharks who also lurk about in the depths of the oceans.

Going with that theme I found a lovely bit of blue velvet to give the feel of the sea, and decided on a buckle to hold it at the back and an octopus sitting at the front. Not having a buckle or octopus lying around I needed to make them, so out comes the polymer clay

I'm not sure if I have mentioned this on here before but I have a real love of polymer clay it is so versatile, I have been playing with it for years now and love to incorporate it into projects. I even have made buttons out of it that can be the exact colour and size/shape I want and go through the washing machine without a problem, wonderful stuff. But I digress as usual.  Polymer clay is the perfect stuff to make an octopus out of, and today I thought I'd show you a few before and after pictures of my painting process.  (There are loads of really good youtube tutorials on painting if you want more details.)

So here Sid before his paint job:

The first thing I did was give him a black wash, ie very watery black acrylic paint sponged over him to soak into the crevices. The buckle and extra tentacles on the other had had a complete black paint job because I wanted them to have a metal look by the end of the process. (Did I mention that I thought a few extra tentacles curling out from the band would look cool?)

Once Sid was quite grubby looking and completely dried off, I started to dry brush him. I have 2 favourite paints for dry brushing, both permanent acrylic metallic paint, first 'pure gold' and second 'copper'. I seem to use these on everything.

Firstly I dry brushed the gold on to Sid and the other parts

Then after a little pause, to ensure that everything was completely dry, or maybe just to make a cup of tea, I dry brushed on the copper, lightly on Sid, but more heavily on the buckle to add to the rusty old metal look.

So then it was just a matter of putting it all together.  I had put holes in the end of the separate tentacles and a couple in Sid too, so the tentacles could be wired and then sewn on that way and Sid was secured with a little bit of sewing.

Here is the back with the buckle in place and the tentacles curling out of the depths....

and Sid in prime spot on the front.

so before and after..

I hope you'll agree that he looks more steampunky.

and just in case polymer clay is new to you, it comes in a whole range of lovely colours too that can be used in wonderful ways that never need painting, I was just using up some old dirty clay in this project.

Here's a couple of non-painted things I've made to give a feel for it..

Hugs and Kisses

Ally