November 18, 2007

9am to Noon, Lunch Break, 1pm to 4-5-ish

Austin Polymer Clay Guild

Location: Click to get the Google Map

"Nature Masks", raising cane with wood grain, flower, and leaf designs. Taking those designs and making a mask. All day event. Take the black, silver and pearl mask and add color. The links below will take you to web sections that will be helpful for this event. Snakes, sheets and blends, that's all you need to know how to do in order to learn these techniques.

Austin Polymer Clay Guild Members: Bring the mask form you made during the guild's workshop in early November. For those who don't have a mask for made bring the materials you need. Denise put together a page for making a mask for out of aluminum foil and polymer clay.

http://www.heartofbastrop.com/polymerclaycreations/FoilHeadForms.html

Supplies: I make effort to use as few tools as possible.  Bring what tools you love to work with. Below are some suggestions.

There is an oven onsite to cure your clay work, bring your curing "pan" from home, or ceramic tiles if that's what you use.

BYOPC: bring your own polymer clay in the colors you wish to work with.  Wood colors can run from a pale yellow to dark brown, with everything in between. Leaves will need blue and yellow to get a basic green and from there white, pearl, or gold can be added for highlights. Flowers are out of control with regard to color. Bring the colors you love to work with.

A pasta machine, if you have one. A "roller" of some sort and some thing to adjust height like some magazines or a deck of cards, if you don't have a pasta machine.

A tissue blade or exacto knife.

ClayShapers if you love them.  Some of the flower techniques rely on ClayShapers.

If you wish to cover something other than a mask mold, like an metal tin, bring those along.

Pictures of wood, flowers, and leaves: Working from nature is the best guide for color, design, and 3D form. Bring pictures of the type of natural designs you'd like to replicate.

This is a skull form that is made from wadding up aluminum foil. I shaped the lower face by rolling it on the table.

Half Mask

One doesn't have to make a whole face mold for masks. One can make a half mask. This is what it looked like fresh and new. Part of the Leopard Cane Group Pages  web section.

NoraJean.Com/Biz-Archive/MSAT/ClayArt/Swaps/DOD/Masks-001 For some examples of Day of the Dead masks from Mexico.

Faux Wood Grain Review Faux wood grain is made of bullseyes (a snake of clay surrounded by a sheet of clay) and more sheets of clay. The bullseyes are buried in the sheets and everything is reduced to a cane and the cane is sliced length wise.  To see how it's done check out the Word Document. NatashaWeaveWoodGrain.doc

and

nj 120604 wood grain  (36 photos) Created on 6/14/2004

Flower Index  The flower canes that will be featured are the "one cane makes many flowers" variety. When making 3D flowers you can get a lot of variety with a few canes by shaping the cane slices in different ways.

01-19-06-YellowOrange Flower Index

DemoLog 1: Blending Orange and Yellow for Flower Petal

DemoLog2: Yellow and orange flower petal with stripes, As a Posey and as an Orchid

Blend two colors and stack inverting every other layer and stair step the layers. That's how you get a Stagger Stack Blend.

The Demo logs are more or less along side of the picture of what was made at the time.

The Demo logs are more or less along side of the picture of what was made at the time.

04-03-04 Demo:  One cane makes many flowers. Two examples, dozen pictures and 2 demo logs. 

nj 070304 leafs  (89 photos)
nj demo 03 July 04 leafs