White Point mutterings, a Cool Cutter Set and a small Varnish Revelation. . . Oh, and NEW SHOP!

The image is also a link. . .

Well, the exciting news first. . . Vic, from up the road fixed my lawn mower. . .

Yeah, OK, that's not really the exciting news, though it did mean that I could finish my assault on the nettles and knee high grass in the orchard. . .

No, the potentially exciting news is that I have started up a new shop at another selling venue!
My ingratitude for the special gift of invisibility bestowed upon my shop by Etsy knows no bounds. ;-)

The images all link to the relevant page in my new shop. . .

I did a bit of research and found a site that is reasonably cheap per month, has no listing fees or sales fees, has usable themes, has the ability to import Etsy listings and link to them etc, and has good and quick customer support (unlike Etsy).
It has very little traffic of it's own, but I figure that if I am going to get stuck into generating my own traffic, I may as well point it to my own standalone shop rather than the train wreck (imho) that Etsy (especially Etsy Studio) seems to be set on becoming.

Except this one hasn't been listed yet. . .

So I have spent long hours working my way through the 300 or so listings I imported into my new shop, tweaking the seo and taking out any etsy links etc. I am about half way through the process so I think I am ready to share what I have been doing with a hopefully sympathetic audience. The site I chose is called 'Indiemade' and has been set up with sellers of handmade stuff in mind.

https://jbdrusticorganic.indiemade.com/store    is the link to my new shop.

Please feel free to check it out. If you feel moved to let me know what you think, don't let me stop you. Anything that bothers you about it, or that is confusing, please give me the benefit of your opinion. Many thanks x Meanwhile I shall continue the tweaking. BTW, all my newer stuff is on there, and at least most of the pics on this post are all linked to those items in my shop. Efficient or what? Phew. . .

Pic is a link as before. . .

So, on to the mutterings. . .
I've been having trouble getting my photos consistent between my camera and my computer. I am setting the white point manually, so that the different colours of the beads I am photographing don't affect each pic differently, but however close I get the colours on my camera screen, the exposure and white point seem way off on my computer. At least they are fairly consistently way off, so I can bring them back in Pshop to a certain extent, but it is a bit of a pain. The monitor is calibrated and all that so I am not quite sure what I am doing wrong if anything. Never mind, just moaning, I'll sort it, ignore,

And this one. . .

As you may be able to tell from the photos sprinkled lovingly throughout this post, I have bought a set of interesting shaped cutters. They are meant for working with leather, but are great for polymer clay. They come in sets of 26 or so and can be found on the usual big online venues for around ten pounds.

This one too. . .

So far I have just used them to make relatively crisp and clean image transfer charm type things, but I will explore further, texturing and distressing and all that.

And of course, this one. . .

My small Varnish Revelation is only a personal revelation, as most sensible people would have worked it out ages ago. . . I started applying Varathene varnish before baking! gasp! It does brighten up the resulting image a bit and seems to prevent any fading during baking. Obviously, the down side is that any distressing of said beads after baking might be harder. I haven't tested this yet, but I will in due course.

Aye well, it's all a learning curve,

Cheers,
Jon x

An Amazing, Scientific Comparison Test, honest. . .

Well, I had a thought the other day. A dangerous concept I know,
"You don't want to go messing around having thoughts" I said to myself, "You never know where it might lead. No good will come of it, mark me words. ."

Yeah, well, I needn't have worried, nothing much came of it.

The thought in question came upon me when I happened to notice that I had four different brands of white polymer clay lurking in my clay storage box. This same thought led me to suppose that I could do one of those super efficient, scientific, comparison type things you see online. I could compare how well different brands of PC cope with the image transfer process, and I could intelligently but casually point out the differences etc, thus adding to the sum knowledge of mankind, and keeping the polymer clay community informed and and forearmed against the vagueries of image transferring onto whichever was the clay of their choice. . .

Well. . it didn't really turn out like that.

OK, this is what I did. I rolled out a suitable sheet of four different clays,
Kato white, Fimo Pro white, Sculpey original white, and Cernit opaque white.

Then I did my usual - like everybody else does - water and rubbing technique, image transfer thing on each of them, using similar images from the same sheet of lazer printed paper.
Below is how they turned out. The image quality was pretty much identical. One 'interesting' point was that the surface of the Fimo pro, where the image wasn't, started to turn a bit grainy, a sort of floury texture as it was eroded by rubbing. The image bit was fine. Also Fimo white is 'whiter' than the others, just a bit.
The image on the Kato white felt slightly rougher somehow, as if bits of it were very slightly raised. None of these things had any bearing on the image quality at all. Even the much maligned Sculpey original performed well.

So then I baked them for about 20 or so mins at 135 degrees C. Below is how they turned out. Again, nothing frightening or unusual as far as I could see. The Sculpey orig seems to have moved slightly towards the redder end of the spectrum, but only very slightly. They all look marginally darker, but that is mainly due to the photo.

I cut the squares out, as I figured I might try to use them at least, as they didn't do anything exciting in my supposed experiment. I cut them out with scissors, which was novel, as I usually cut them out with a craft knife before baking.

Once cut out, I painted the backs and sides with 'Ginger' alcohol ink and treated the whole thing with Renaissance Wax and buffed them up a bit. 

Then I decided that they were too 'bendy', meaning they hadn't been baked enough, so thinking 'What the hell." I chucked them back in the Halogen oven for another 20 mins. 

Maybe a bit long, as they all bent up a bit as the image side seemingly shrank a touch. They were all suitably stiff and hard though. The odd one out was the Sculpey Original, it went a pinky purple! I 'think' it was the renaissance wax melting and dissolving the ink or toner and diffusing it across the surface. Very odd. (Ren wax and toner don't get on.) Might be something to play with in future and see what cool effects could be got. . . hmmmm. .

The Kato came out the hardest and stiffest, with the Fimo and Cernit being a bit bendy but v tough. The Sculpey was pretty strong, but would probably snap if you really bent it hard. But then, why would you do that?

So, my expert conclusion about which brand of Poly clay to use for image transfer is? . .

That it doesn't really matter. Sculpey Original would need to be a touch thicker or have a thin backing sheet made of one of the tougher brands to be useful in more demanding applications, but it is perfectly ok, as long as long as you don't rebake for too long after using ren wax on it. An unlikely circumstance, unless you are me. . .

Oh well. . . . Mankind's knowledge will just have to wait for another day for my input OK?

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

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 ;-)

Image Transfer - more musings and more results.

Well, after finally having the time to get stuck in to some Polymer Clay after the new year, I spent a fairly intense day refining my image transfer technique and my faux ancient, fake ageing surface treatment. It seems quite perverse to make a clean, clear image transfer and then trash it with alcohol ink and sandpaper, but the end result is worth it, in my view. The clean originals are just too. . . clean somehow. Also I like the contradiction inherent in making a computer generated image appear to be something dug up from an archaeological site.
From the reaction I have got from various sources, some from artist's who's work I admire very much, it seems I am doing the right thing ;-)

So, I confirmed to myself that a mix of 15-20% trans clay to 80-85% whatever basic clay you are using to transfer the image onto, is best. The image sticks to the clay appreciably better than it does to plain clay and looks a bit clearer.

I'm still not 100% convinced about dye sublimation inks and paper working as well as the lazer print and water technique. But it has it's own look, and it seems to absorb the image into the clay a little bit. Which makes distressing the surface a bit harder, you need to really go at it. . ;-)
I need to experiment with baking times and with transferring onto pre baked clay.

So here are a few of the beads I made.
What do you reckon?
Jon x

Aged dye sub hollow 2cm square beads

seriously distressed, hollow, 4cm round disk beads

dye sub - yellow acrylic ink version

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.

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

Black and White

 

It occurred to me while messing around with my Image transfer stuff, that a simple black and white image might look striking and graphic on a tube bead or two. While pondering this I remembered the images I have been using to make the negatives for my Photopolymer texture sheets, which were conveniently black and white and available. I got some examples printed off at the local copy shop and tried some out.

I thought they came out pretty well. The rounded pattern looked a bit like those African eye beads you see around, but nicely different. I tried some chunkier beads than my usual. I'll try some hollow ones at some point I think, that way they would be lighter.

I still have to work out how they should be presented on a pendant or necklace and what beads they might go with, but I'll mess around until something clicks.

cheers,
Jon x

Image Transfer - more musings

Having been somewhat obsessed with rolling my image mapped bits of clay round tube beads, I decided to change focus for a bit and try using the flat images as just that, flat images. As the designs suggest tiles, and were initially created to echo tile designs in the real world I made what you might call tile beads with them.
I used a technique that Claire Maunsell shared a while back, for making hollow beads using cutters of different sizes, to construct a few square, hollow, double sided tile beads.

Basically, you transfer a couple of images using the water and index finger attrition method described in my previous post, making sure the image is slightly smaller than the larger of your two cutters.Then you cut out a couple of blank squares the same thickness as your image trans squares. Then, taking the smaller cutter, chop out the middle of the two (or more if you want a thicker bead) blank squares. Make sure your image squares are dry and not going to smudge ( I put a coat of Klear floor polish on them ) put the first one face down on your work surface, stack the two blank squares with the centres chopped out on top and finish off with the second image square face up. Gently push together without squashing or distorting.

Make a hole about 3/4 of the way up what will be the vertical side of your bead when strung, on both sides in order to allow string/thong to be threaded through, poke a barbq skewer or suchlike mandrel through the holes to suspend the bead on whatever kind of rack you use when baking, then bake. . .
Being me I had to mess around with them after baking. I painted the sides with alcohol ink and then gently sanded the top and bottom where the ink had encroached onto those surfaces. As they had been varnished and fired the sanding didn't erode the images as long as I was careful, but did take away some of the ink, giving a nice, faux ancient effect.
I'm really pleased with how they turned out and am going to mess around some more with this technique, when I get some time. . .
cheers,
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

Man Stuff

Somebody on a forum I hang around on said that my work had a 'masculine' vibe to it. I have no problem with that assertion, I don't have much interest in the prettier more delicate side of things.

(Not that I deem pretty and delicate to just be something that interests women, you understand. I draw a distinction between 'female' and 'feminine', just as I would between 'male' and 'masculine'. Pretty and delicate is generally classed as 'feminine' while the more rugged and chunky side of things is generally considered to be 'masculine'. I'll go with the generally accepted view for the sake of convenience if nothing else. All that 'sex vs gender' stuff gets complicated pretty quick so I will back off before I mess up too badly.)

So, my work has a masculine vibe.

An addendum to that remark was that I might consider making jewellery for men.

This wasn't something I had considered, having only recently started making jewellery at all, and not really thought deeply about who it might be for. . . So I had a scout around online to see what was what in the adornment for chaps department.

Well, there's a fair bit of it about. Quite a lot of chunks of grey metal on thick leather thong, sub David Beckham kind of stuff. Not very me. The other end of the scale seemed to be the hippy guy stuff, rough ethnic beads worn in festoons. Fun but a bit too hippy. There's a sort of 'Man of the Woods' style with it's fair share of chunky clay, wood, leather and twisted hessian. But it's all a bit hairy chested for me. ( I had a hair on my chest once, but it has long since departed. I cry about it sometimes. .)
There's also something that categorises itself as 'beach', which seems to be quite simple stones or beads on a simple thread/thong. Quite nice but my nearest beach is miles away, pretty crap as far as surf goes, and freezing cold most of the year, so I can't get inspired thinking of beaches really. (Although, there is a place called California just a bit further away. Trouble is, it's a basically a bleedin great caravan site as far as I remember and nothing even vaguely like the 'real' California. makes me smile to think of the comparison though. It's entirely likely that it was called California way before the other California. . . hah!)

I guess if I were to go down the road of making male jewellery I would want to situate myself somewhere in the middle of all the above. Kind of Surfing Hippy Man of the Woods with sub David Beckham tendencies. (Google that!)
So anyway, I made this.

Any views on it's gender pretensions? I actually wore it round the house to see how it felt and looked. I thought it was pretty cool. . . Your mileage may vary. . . ;-)
best,
Jon

Dangerous Dancing. .

Well, I felt me age yesterday. There I was, working away at my desk with my iTunes set to 'random', which is a nice way to get an eclectic mix of tunes, the majority of which you will like, when this came on.

Yeeeeeah. . !
It's from an album called 'Intensified' that I had back in the eighties. As I'd been sitting down for hours by then I stood up and stretched my legs. Then I thought I'd try that 'running on the spot in slow motion' type dance that was de rigeur amongst Ska fans in my youth. Like the guy out of Madness used to do. I mean you can't not move to that tune innit?

So I was just getting into me stride when Eeeeek! .  my left calf muscle gave a serious twinge. I curtailed all bopping activity with immediate effect and gingerly flexed my left foot. . . Ow!. . .
So now I can't put my weight on my toe on that side and I'm hobbling about the place. No serious damage thankfully, but it makes you realise A. - How suddenly something can happen that affects your life and how you live it. I can't drive for a day or two, or walk to the shops etc. B. - How often you actually use your calf muscle, going up and down stairs is interesting. . and C. - It makes you admire even more how disabled people cope on a daily basis. Respect!

Oh well, I'll survive, poor old boy. . . Fah!

Anyway, on a happier note I sold three big buttons and a set of small buttons on Etsy, hooray. I shall make some more. . .

best,
Old limping Jon

Sold Something. . .

At a local art show. I entered a few of my framed, printed tiles in a 'Well why not?' sort of mood, and when I turned up today to pick up my work, was agreeably surprised to find that I had sold one of my special 3 -tiles-in-a-frame ones. One of my seemingly Art Nouveau derived ones.

Though the 'Art Nouveau' is actually no such thing. The shapes in my tile design that echo that famous art movement being a product of complex fractal mathematics, a finely honed skill set, experience and a creative mind that Follows the Fascination where it leads. . . I found the resemblance during my digital explorations, and pursued it ;-)

I'm glad somebody liked them enough to buy them. I like them, but I don't really count. It also shows that I finally may have the pricing about right. £75. I didn't have time to photograph them before I put them in the show but here is a quick Pshop mock-up. I shall make some more of that design. And I think I shall try a 3 tiler or two in my tiles and coasters Etsy shop.
Onwards and upwards. . . ;-)

An update

Just a quick update on my polymer clay activities for them as are interested in such things and are reading this blog. OK so that's nobody. Well, I'm interested so I shall inform myself of my own activity ;-)

I put Thursday aside as my official Polymer Clay day, as I work hard enough the rest of the week on other stuff, and as I am freelance and work from home, I can allocate my time as I choose. This is the upside of freelance life, and not one I would change for all the tea in China. (partly because I wouldn't have room for all that tea, I would need a VERY big shed, but mainly because I can't see anyone offering me that particular deal, but as they say, be careful what you wish for. .)
So, on Thursday I made a whole bunch of components for possible and probable future projects, such as constructing necklaces.

Here's a pic or two.

From the top, three of my 'unfortunate resemblance' beads, better known to me as 'turd beads'. I shall know better than to make organic looking textured beads out of brown clay and texture them in yet more browny coloured stuff in future. Next to them are some textured disk beads, Below them are some faux 'African' scratched tube beads and some cool round scratch beads.

then some primitive spacers and then some of my image transfer beads, which always turn out just that annoying bit more 'rustic' than I intended. Still, I like them.

I made a possible necklace from various components. This is the sort of thing I want to pursue. Possibly even doing some stuff for men, having had a look to see what is being done in that area on Etsy. Interesting. . .
thanks for reading,
Jon x