The Ups and Downs of Retail, A New Venture and The Wife in a Wheelbarrow. .

A bit of a gap between posts again, so sorry about that. I am slowly getting into the habit of blogging again. I heard on the radio that blogging is becoming more popular again, I wouldn't know about that, not exactly having my finger on the pulse of these things these days, but if true I applaud this trend.

Anyway, having been thoroughly spoiled by my work selling really well on Facebook over the last 12 months or so, I have had a couple of evening listing sessions that have been somewhat lacklustre. Not that I actually expect to sell out of my ten or twelve items every time but I must have got used to it at some level because I felt rather bereft when only two or three things sold. Bloody artists fragile ego again ;-)

Well, retail has its ups and downs I'm told.

The worrying part of this for me is that I just signed myself up for a 'Showcase' on the 26th at -

https://www.facebook.com/groups/LBAGalleriaSellersGroup

And if levels of interest are as low as the last week it could be a bit of a disappointment.

Distressed Digital Mid Century pus LEDs

The other thing is that it starts at what is a reasonable time for those in the USA but a silly time for me here in the UK. I'm not going to be kicking off my show at flamin midnight, thank you very much. I'll be in bed asleep! So I will list when I get up in the morning, which will be when most of my USA buyers will be in bed asleep. . . Sigh. . . And it finishes at midnight the next day, which is early evening for USA people, and probably the time they start to go online. Moan, groan, whinge. . .

Simple rustic spikes

So not ideal but we'll see what happens. I have made some very nice things to list so if you are around on the 26th Nov any time between 7.30 a.m. UK time (2 or 3 a.m. approx. various USA time zones) until midnight UK time (6 or 7 p.m. various US time zones) check it out.

Another model railway figure piece

Just to add to stress levels, my wife slipped on a bit of tiled floor and hurt her foot badly, she couldn't put weight on it and it started to swell up. As it was Sunday night we decided to wait and hit the A&E dept at the local hospital the next day if it was still bad in the morning. The thing was, she had to get over to her studio, across the yard to use her computer to email an Art group that were expecting her to take a workshop the next day. Obviously it had to be cancelled.

We don't have any crutches lying about the place, so we tried a walking stick, no good, a broom, improvised as a crutch, no good.  . . I was debating trying to give her a piggy back across the yard when we remembered the wheelbarrow ;-)
So I trundled her across the yard. Luckily it was a clean wheelbarrow, and luckily we are not overlooked. . . It did add some levity to a somewhat fraught occasion.
We got to A&E the next day and she had x-rays etc. Nothing broken thank heaven but she needed crutches for a day or two.
I also managed to put my back out helping her get around, but not badly. . Fun times ;-)

Is it a Bird?

Anyway, on a positive note, our pond has been refilling in all the wet weather we have been having. it almost completely dried out in the summer, which was worrying. The geese weren't happy either. So now we have a reason to feel pleased when it rains, and so do the geese ;-)

Digital Mid Century. .

Wish me luck with the showcase, and have a good Thanksgiving all you USA folks.

Jon x

Which Way Round?

Image 1

The thing about round image trans beads, the way I do them anyway, is that what seems to be the logical way to align the image doesn't show the image to its best advantage. See Image 1, above. 

I cut out two round, symmetrical pattern, image transfer circles and wrapped them round my bead core with the centre of each circle being over the stringing hole. Which looked fine until I actually stuck them on a string, at which point I found that the main focus of the pattern was hidden in the shadowy space between beads. The most visible part was the seam and the edge of the pattern, which was not ideal. It looked nice, but felt unsatisfactory. (Note- with an abstract, non symmetrical image, this issue doesn't arise, but I want to use my groovy patterns.)

Image 2

So I tried another way. Image 2. Aligning the images facing horizontally, so that the edges/seam cross the stringing hole, and the full pattern is visible on both 'sides' of the bead, facing the viewer as it were. It still gives you the seam on the other two 'sides' though. This works nicely, but depends on the direction the bead is facing. If the seam is facing the viewer things are less satisfactory.
You also can have difficulty locating the stringing hole in the core bead, unlike the previous method, where it is easy to find, at the centre of the pattern.

Image 3

Another way I tried, - Image 3 - hoping to sidestep the previous issue of having the seam presenting when I didn't want it to, was to wrap a larger pattern round one 'side' of the bead, (as far as that is possible, what with the overlaps and crinkles you might get once you get past the 'waist ' of the bead), and fill in the remainder with spare bits of pattern etc.

Image 4

OK, that worked up to a point, but the non pattern part still looked messy. Image 4. Probably, with a more planned approach it could look good, but I'm not convinced by it at present.

The other issue I had with these particular beads was my own fault. I wrapped some blank clay round a smaller bead core to make the core bigger, so I could use a bigger image. What I should have done was to bake the wrapped core before adding the image trans, but I didn't, so as the unbaked clay I had wrapped round the core was a bit squishy, things got a bit misshapen in the image wrapping and hole piercing process. . .

Well, live and learn. . And stop being so impatient!

I'm still not sure what my best option is. I might try wrapping a wide strip of pattern round the 'waist' of the bead. . . My best bet is probably to design some patterns with the interest being round the edges rather than the middle, then option 1 would work better. . . I dunno. But I will definitely bake the core next time. . ;-)
Jon x

Do you like scr - scr - scratching?

Apologies to A Tribe Called Quest for the title. (I think that's who it was. It was a while ago. I feel old now. Actually I felt old anyway. . . ;-)   )
In my search for the authentically rustic, if such a thing really exists, I like to go really simple. What is one of the most basic ways of getting a design onto a bead? Yup, scratching it into the surface, that's what. I have messed around previously with this process, but with limited success. I scratched a design onto a a bead that had been covered in black gilder's paste, which looked nice, white design on black, but didn't like renaissance wax being added to the mix. Gilder's paste and ren wax don't get on, the wax takes the paste off unless you apply it oh so carefully.
Actually, the ones pictured below were unwaxed. Embarrassingly, the gilder's paste on it's own was not very robust, as I found out after having sold some. (Sorry Claire, lesson learned. .) This was a good while ago I have to say.

 So I tried scratching a design onto baked white clay, and then filling the scratches in with black ink or wax or whatever. I found that scratching into white clay with my trusty craft knife blade thingy, (one of those snap off multiple times ones, you know. . .) that I found it hard to see what I had been doing, being white on white and all. Painting the bead with dilute alcohol ink first helped to show what was scratched and unscratched, so I did that. I tried a few ways of filling the scratches with black. First, oil pastel, rubbed into the scratches, then 'fixed' with a heat gun. I thought it might melt into the scratches, but it didn't do it very well. I sanded the excess off to reveal the scratches and sealed with ren wax. Ren wax hates oil pastel too so things got a bit smeary. I tried black chinagraph pencil, as I had found a box of them for £1 in a local charity shop the week before. Same result really, only ren wax really hates chinagraph pencil.
What I did was to make use of the ren wax's tendency to dissolve gilder's paste, and apply g paste fairly generously, then use ren wax to on top and rub the resulting black stuff into the scratches. Then let it dry and sand off the excess. Ren wax on top was fine if applied fairly quickly without rubbing too much.
In hindsight, the easiest way might be to use black alcohol ink and sand off the excess. Ren wax is OK with alc ink, not best friends but ok. In future I will also try black acrylic paint or acrylic ink I think. Anything black that gets into the scratches will do the job though.

You could use dark brown alc ink, as in the examples above, and then paint with a lighter colour.

I like the result, only I worry that they are on the verge of looking less like arty 'primitive' beads, than ones that have been attacked by a ham fisted eight year old with attitude. Are they too 'crude'? They could be done with more 'care' but I am not sure that is the point of them. Their crudeness and simplicity 'should' be what gives them their charm. I may be wrong though. What you guys fink?
Jon x

Image Transfer - part 324. . .

I'm still obsessed with image transfer stuff, and, though I say it myself as shouldn't, I have got it down pretty well by now.

Here's some I made earlier. .  Claire Maunsell gradauted cutters technique,  hollow beads. A repeat order no less ;-) Relatively gently 'antiqued' this time.

I have an idea of what works and what doesn't, which leaves me free to make various different sorts of beads, and to consider the different uses I could put the resulting beads to, instead of having to concentrate on the technique. . .

For instance, these are some 1.5 cm square, about 1cm thick, hollow, asymmetrical pattern, image beads I made because I liked the 3cm ones and thought smaller, chunky beads might look cool. Not sure what they would be best suited to, but necklace/pendant/assemblage beads looks the best option I think.

I can't stop making cufflinks. Even though I haven't sold many. They just look so cool! 

I am resisting the idea that a pair of cufflinks should match exactly. These, and all my other pairs, have similar, but not identical designs on them.

Some of the beads I made, that might have become cufflinks if I hadn't got a grip on my cufflink obsession, I made into earrings.

I have to stop making those soon too, or I will be overrun with them ;-)

Next, I going to try Tie tacks, I got some blanks the other day. Rings, if I can successfully mess up the horribly shiny ring blanks I got. I have sandpaper and alcohol inks etc, so I don't see it being a problem. . . And brooches, once I have researched what kind of pins and brooches other artists make, to get an idea of the scope of the 'medium'.
Should be fun ;-)
Jon x

When do you stop experimenting?

I guess the answer to that is 'You don't!'.
OK, put it this way - 'When should you stop experimenting?'
I would like to think the answer would be 'Never!', but it depends on what you are trying to achieve.
It is always tempting to try something new out, but it can be a distraction if you are aiming to refine a process. It can be tedious tweaking small details in order to get a process right, it's much easier and more fun to just mess about with a new idea instead.

An example - I tried these designs as stud earrings. I don't really think they work as such. (too big? 10mm and 15mm) I need to research the particular character stud earrings have, and adapt. I feel I am just not 'getting it' right now. I need to plug away at this, but it would be more fun to mess around with another new idea. . .

I come up against this all the time. I have so may things I want to try. . .
My solution, such as it is, is to do both at the same time. When your detail tweak stuff is baking, you have a half hour to experiment, and when your experimental things are baking, you have half an hour to refine your detail tweak stuff. . . You can prioritise each process at different times of day.

Refining the process - Image transfers onto raw clay, ready to be cut out and baked. I've got this pretty much sorted now. I need to concentrate on what images work best at what size next. . . And I need to remember to work on the tile I want to bake them on! . . I forgot,  which meant that they distorted slightly when I lifted them off my big work tile and onto my baking tile. Duh. .

This dilemma also spills over into deciding what I should put in my shop. I have to weigh up whether it is worth the time and effort to photograph and list something that might prove to be unpopular.
Well, at the stage my shop is at, I think I have to adopt the approach of trying anything and everything, and refining from there based on the reactions things get.

An experiment with digital African style black and white images - and with possible matching pendant and earring beads. Not sure if I will list this, but I probably will. It's the only way to find out if I'm heading in the right direction.

Image Transfer mutterings vol 300. . - So much for Dye Sub

Well, after meaning to get round to trying out my dye sublimation heatpress on baked polymer clay for ages, I finally tried it out today. 'Disappointing' is the word. For a start, the poly clay stuck to the top 'platen' of the heat press and had to be hurriedly scraped off. Then the paper stuck to the clay during the dye sub process and had to be soaked off. And once everything had dried out from that it all looked extremely dull and uninteresting.

I tried Renaissance wax on top but that wasn't much better. I tried fine sandpaper, to see if I could sand down to something stronger, as the image would be part of the clay, but it was only fractionally better.

The left hand one is sanded and waxed and buffed. It's sort of OK, but not really worth the effort.

I was perplexed because on the right substrate, in this case an mdf coaster coated in a special pvc related substance, the image is bright and pretty clear. Polymer clay should have the right chemical make up to take dye sub inks. . .

So, forget dye sub, says I. I might try cutting up an mdf coaster and dye subbing onto the bits in order to make small image tile things, but that feels a bit like cheating, as I wanted to find ways of getting better images onto Polymer Clay. . .

Oh well. . .

At least the mice in the garden were on my side. Look what they left for me to find under the damson tree. These would be fun to incorporate into some kind of jewellery I think.

And these, they left were left under the cherry tree.

Thanks mice ;-)

About time I posted something - Apologies - Various updates

Just a pretty pic without much relevance to this post, but at least it's something new. Image trans bead with some rustic spacers as a possible earring. A bit too derivative in style though maybe (?) and there is a lot of it about. . . Not entirely comfortable with it.

Shop stuff - Well, I'm still getting my head round SEO and Relevancy. . I've attacked about half my shop's content and 'optimised' it, to my understanding anyway, which may be flawed so I might have just wasted my time. .
It seems to be working. I get about 40% more views, which is nice. And the keywords in my stats now resemble the ones in my listings. Still F all from Google though. hmmm.
Was that boring? sorry. . . sigh. . . What is happening to me? ;-)

Image trans beads as described below, antiqued up. Maybe good for stud/post earrings, or rings. I need to get some blanks to play with. The learning curve steepens. . .

Image trans stuff - I refined one of the techniques I use a little bit more. You can get a slightly dull, not ever so sharp but perfectly usable (for my purposes) image transfer from lazer copy paper by laying the image onto the polymer clay and leaving it for at least an hour, (less might work fine) until the image is visible through the back of the paper, like the paper has soaked up the oils from the clay somewhat. Then bake for the normal time and peel off the paper. A slightly crisper image can be obtained if you coat the clay with a thin layer of clear liquid clay first and lay the image onto that.
It's less work than rubbing the paper away with water and your finger, and it doesn't distort the clay, but then it's not raw clay anymore so you can't wrap it round anything.

I'm going to try cutting up a dye sub tile blank if I can, into small squares and transferring onto them, to get a really crisp image. Or smashing a tile into shards and transferring onto them. . . and then seeing how I could 'antique' them.

I need to get back to making some texture sheets and textured dangle beads and stuff, SEO and image trans has been engrossing me and I need a break.

Onwards and upwards.  . or at least, not downwards.
J x

Oh yeah, and I'm on Instagram, in a tentative way  @jonburgessdesign
Not quite sure what to do with it yet.

Surface treatment - When does 'Distressed' become 'Messed up'?

Is there actually a dividing line? I am really enjoying seeing how close to total irreparable messed-up-ness I can take my image transfer bead 'ageing' process. It's a learning curve, and once you have taken a process too far, you can take a more informed view on how far to take it the next time.

Here's how things start out. Images transferred onto poly clay squares, in this case, using dye sub paper and kato trans liquid. This shot is after baking, obviously. You get a slightly fuzzy, out of focus effect, and some randomly dodgy edges. All of which is fine, as it all adds to the finished look. Neatness can be achieved with more care, if neatness is your thing.

Here's a shot of my desk with some of the above as finished beads, after the 'distressing' or 'messing up', (whichever it is deemed to be) process.

A closer view of the greeny brown ones. Sanded quite hard, as scratching Kato clear is not as easy as plain baked clay. Also, the scratches aren't visible until some darker ink/paint/whatever is applied and encouraged to sink into them.

This is what happens when the process is taken a bit further. These beads are slightly different in that the image trans process was the more usual one using a laser copy/print and water on plain white clay, or a 10% kato trans, 90% white poly clay mix. (Images 'stick' better with a bit of trans clay in the mix).

As there is no liquid clay involved, the surface scratches and distresses more easily. The image comes out sharper than the dye sub ones too. The other thing that happens with this method is that when Renaissance Wax is used at the end of the process, and rubbed in, it starts to dissolve the image. If you apply it carefully and leave it to dry for half an hour or so, it will buff up without too much of the image disappearing, but if you rub it in hard and buff up after a couple of minutes a fair bit of the image is removed. I like both effects. The top left bead has almost entirely lost the image, but looks cool all the same. imho.

These next ones are where it gets close to or over the dividing line between 'distressed' and 'messed up' that I am wittering on about. I like the kind of 'ghost image' of the pattern in red that gets left on the two on the right. This technique does make me wonder whether I should make some beads with no image on them at all, just madly messed up surfaces. I like the look, and losing the image, as in the bottom left bead, doesn't detract from it's coolness all that much. But overall, the ones where the image is still reasonably discernible are my favourites. How 'bout you?

That New Year Motivation thing. . .

My Christmas present to my sister

This last Christmas and New Year break seemed to go on for ever. I always find that weird, dead few days between Christmas and new Year's eve a bit disconcerting. I never quite know what to do with myself for some reason. I don't want to start on anything new because it's not the new year yet, and the old year has still to have its final fling. Normal life can't be resumed until it's all over with.

Usually by the time the second of January comes (the first being a bank holiday of course) I am, and my wife is, what we call "Peopled out", we just want to get on with our own stuff, (we are both artists) and find being back in the real world again something of a relief. The trouble was, this time round, New Year was just before the weekend, so in effect, normal existence didn't happen until that was out of the way. It didn't happen until today, Monday the 5th. Frankly it was all a bit frustrating.

So, now the world is up and running again I can fix up that dentist's appointment, clear up that issue with the bank, email that publisher etc etc.

It's especially frustrating when you have made all these plans for what you will do in the new year. How your life will change for the better. How you will be a more efficient and organised person. How you will sort out all those things you somehow never got around to sorting out last year. You can't wait to get started on your new life ;-)
Yeah well, It may not last, but the intention is there all the same. I feel optimistic this year. Long may that feeling last.

I hope you had a good one, and have a good one, if that makes sense, or even if it doesn't. . .

Jon x

Here's a couple of pretty pictures that might end up on some image trans beads in the near future. It's one of the gazillion new year things I've planned to do, make a load more groovy image trans beads.

Downs and Ups

Downs -
Yesterday was a bit depressing. I got some feedback informing me that I had messed up big time.
A month or two a go I made some 3cm ish size textured and surface messed with disks as a way of showing my groovy textures. I then had a bright idea, they would make really nice buttons. So I drilled a couple of holes and put them on Etsy. Yay, Buttons! They got some likes and some kind soul bought some.

The trouble was, in my haste to get them out there, and with my concentration on what they looked like, I had overlooked an important thing about buttons and about the durability of polymer clay. Buttons have to be pretty strong, and a largish disk of polymer clay at about 2.5mm thick is not going to be strong enough to withstand the stresses that buttons need to withstand.
Sure enough, they broke and the buyer left a fully justified bad review. I of course apologised and offered a full refund including postage. I felt really stupid and guilty. . . Still do. So I have taken all the buttons I was selling off Etsy and will not offer any more for sale until I know that they are up to the task. I'm so annoyed at myself.

Ups -
This morning I sold a necklace! One of my image trans tube beads ones. Don't worry, unlike my buttons, my beads are solid! And the clasp on the necklace has been vigorously tug tested so that shouldn't embarrass me anytime soon. I sincerely hope!

And a local gallery sold two sets of my glass coasters. That cheered me up. I needed a bit of affirmation to counteract the button fiasco.
Well, onwards and upwards is what I say. .
Jon x

An Experiment. . . .

Glass coasters from my Etsy shop

As you may or may not be aware, I have been making and selling framed tiles and glass coasters of my digital designs for a while now. To do this I use a process known as Dye Sublimation to transfer the

printed images onto the tiles or coasters. This involves using heat and pressure via a special heat press, specially coated tiles etc, and special printer paper and inks.

OK, Dye sublimation likes certain kinds of plastics and I was pretty sure that Polymer clay was likely to take a dye sub image pretty well. 

I decided to experiment as I had my specially set up printer and loads of paper, so I printed out a sheet of small images to mess around with. 

What I decided to do was use a disk of unbaked clay to apply the image to, but put a thin coating of liquid clay onto the image so that it stuck to the image and to the clay. The reason I wanted to stick the image to the clay was that I was intending to use a heat gun to 'bake' the liquid clay and transfer the image to it. If the image wasn't stuck down it would end up getting blown away. (I'm too impatient to bake them in the oven, and I wanted to do one at a time to see the results quicker)

So I tried that. I gave the image about one minute with the heat gun on medium. ( my heat gun has a heat intensity dial, which is very useful - Wickes sell that model ) I was careful not to burn it. The image became visible through the paper quite quickly but I kept heating it just to be sure it had transferred. 

I then wetted the back of the image and rubbed the paper off. You can soak it in a bowl of water if you wish, same difference. The clay disks weren't properly baked so I baked them in the oven for about 15 mins or so to cure the clay. The results were very clean and clear.

More or less un-messed with image transfer disks. Just a bot of Alcohol ink round the rim.

Too clean and clear for me ;-) having established that my method worked I decided to get stuck into some surface treatment on some of them. I tried my usual various combinations of alcohol inks, inca gold and gilder's wax in various colours, sanding it off a bit and then adding more, and so on and so on.

They looked nice, but there was no way of stringing them if I wanted to use them, so I made them into the front layer of some circular hollow beads, using the Claire Maunsell method with different sized cutters. This of course required the whole thing to be baked. . .

The trouble was that baking would melt the gilder's wax and disperse or otherwise mess up the alcohol inks intensity. Oh well, couldn't be helped. They came out solidly baked but a bit muzzy and fuzzy. So I used the same alcohol inks that I was painting the back and sides with to paint round the 'frame' of the front image. The resulting beads looked seriously beat up but cool all the same. Like something dug up from some archaeological site, on another planet. . . Which is fine by me.

But not as beat up as my attempts at transferring black and white images onto already baked clay disks. The image didn't stick to the clay as nicely as with raw clay and kept peeling off in an annoying way. I used some 'heat tape' that I use for dye sub stuff to hold it down but that wasn't always successful. I did the same as the beads above, giving them the surface treatment, then deciding to make them into usable beads by sticking another disk of clay behind them and then baking.

These ones look like they've been dug up from an ancient site, thrown off a cliff and then run over repeatedly by a chieftain tank. I like them though.

Next time I shall do things in the right order, but I shall still go for the messed up look ;-)
I might even do a proper tutorial in due course.
Jon x

Cheap prints!

I extended my price realism still further - to my Tiles and Coasters shop. I have had abstract prints for sale on there for a fair few months now and though they have accumulated a fair number of faves and views, none have sold.

This is a shame, so, in the spirit of 'realism' referred to earlier, I have knocked the prices down by about 40%. This may result in nothing whatever changing, but at least I will know that it isn't the price that is putting people off buying.
Jon x

Image transfer musings

I've spent a fair few hours wrestling with various forms of image transfer onto Polymer Clay over the past few months. I have various (hundreds. . . ) of cool images that I created digitally by various means, that I have wanted to get off the computer and onto any substrate that will take them. Getting them onto Polymer Clay seemed an interesting challenge.
My explorations so far have been aimed at trying to get images onto raw clay that I could then manipulate by wrapping them round things. Most of the brighter and crisper ways of transferring images all seemed to involve baking the clay, or blasting liquid clay with a heat gun. OK in their way but you are left with a stiff, flat thing that is unwrappable.
The only way I found to transfer onto raw clay was the one that Donna Kato mentions in her book on Creative Surface Effects. It involves using a laser print, (it doesn't work with inkjets) and water. Several people have Youtube vids of this technique too. Basically you place the image face down on a bit of clay, rub/burnish the back of it to make sure the image is in good contact with the clay surface, then, using water and your index finger, rub gently-ish until the paper rubs off. This leaves you with the image that was once on the paper, now imprinted on the surface of the clay. There are various subtleties to it but in a nutshell, that's what you do.
What I then tried was to wrap that image around a pre-made tube bead, either baked or unbaked. The problem I encountered was that the image stuck to my fingers and smudged badly. OK, I tried hardly touching the image when wrapping, but that was very hard to do as some pressure and guidance is needed to get the wrap at the right angle etc.
I tried this technique with trans clay. The image stuck to the clay better, and much less to my fingers, but the resultant image looked a bit faded and dull somehow.

Early experiments

So I thought a bit and decided to try a mix of trans and white clay, white for the image quality and trans for the relative handleability. I tried about 80% white to 20% trans. This was better and I got some reasonable results, with the caveat that I wasn't going for anything pristine, I liked the wonky, cheap transfer/ancient artifact/rustic vibe I was getting, I just didn't want smudged images.
On a whim I tried something out. .  I figured that what I needed was something in between the image and my fingers that would protect it from smudging when being handled, so I tried a thin coat of Klear floor polish brushed on. This worked OK up to a point. . .
The issue with the basic laser print/water technique is that when left, over time the ink gets stickier and the clay gets stiffer and likely to crack when being wrapped. Putting a thin layer of weak varnish on helps with the first problem, but not so much with the latter, you have to try to judge when the varnish is dry enough to handle but that it hasn't dried to the extent that it will crack when wrapped.
I have had some success with this but still have to handle it as little as I can as the act of wrapping seems to re awaken the stickiness somehow. It's also not consistent enough for me to draw firm conclusions about what I am doing. I feel it sort of works, most of the time ;-)
Any of you found better methods?
Jon x