Pullin' out the ol' electric buffer. . .

I haven't used my electric buffer (a bench grinder fitted with buffing wheels) for quite some time. (One of the major benefits of making miniature food is that you don't really have to sand or buff that much.) So when I set it up and switched it on again, I had to remind myself how things worked. I was a little nervous. It didn't take long to get back into the groove, but even "the groove" isn't very groovy, when it comes to buffing. ;o) I love the incredibly glass-like shine you can only get by "power-buffing"-- and I like doing a piece now and then just for the fun of seeing the shine pop up-- but I wouldn't mind passing off the bulk of my sanding and buffing to someone else!

So, now that I've gotten the whining out of the way. . . ;o) . . .you may be wondering what I was buffing.

I started working my way through a small pile of mokume gane beads. I've had these things sitting around for I-don't-know-how-long. I know it's been over a month, maybe two. (They were probably sitting on my clay table for a month before I even got around to curing them!) I used a ripple blade a lot in this batch, as you can see from the rippling pattern in some of them. . . What else? I'm pretty sure this batch didn't have any leaf in it-- just various types of paints. The golden-green must be Dazzling Metallics-- Festive Green-- because I got that as a gift back at Christmas, and I wanted to try it out. As for the other paints, I don't remember which I used. Probably Blue Topaz from the FolkArt line of metallic craft paints. . . and a blue-green from Posh Impressions' Luminous Metallic Inkabilities. Oh, and some of my trusty four-colors-a-dollar glitter. (g)

Some turned out better than others, as usual with mokume gane. Maybe the colors were a bit too similar for maximum impact, but I do tend to like monochromatic and limited color schemes.

I also buffed a few "shell-shaped" beads I made a few weeks ago. Well, I call them "shell-shaped". A couple of them are nautilus-shaped pendants (with the wire bit taken out for the sanding and buffing stage), but the first one just makes me think of spiral seashells.

This is my first attempt at a bead shape I admired in Making Polymer Clay Beads. It's pretty simple to get this shape-- just make a snake that's relatively "fat" in the middle and "skinny" at both ends, then wind it around a skewer or rod to shape it. My technique still needs some work, but I had fun playing around. I used scrap clay-- a mostly opaque pale blue with flecks of aluminum leaf in it and a mostly translucent aqua with lots of glitter in it. (Aqua is one of my favorite colors, these days. It's perfect for summertime, I think, and a fitting color for sea-themed pieces.)



Next, here's one of the nautilus-shaped pendants. Again, I used the aqua-translucent clay with glitter, this time paired with a Skinner blend that goes from aqua to more of a periwinkle blue.


One last photo-- another nautilus pendant. This time, I used the same Skinner blend from above, but I switched the glittered clay out for pearl.


Incidentally, I think this was the first time I made a Skinner blend that I was actually happy with. I think I've only tried it once-- maybe twice-- before. (I know, it's shocking. How can someone have used clay for a couple of years without blending?!) Now that I know how to do it, I'm going to have to give it another try. I'm thinking of peachy-orange and pink-- or sunset pink and purple. . . more beachy colors for seashells. :o)

Apart from the obsessing...

When I haven't been working to set the house to rights-- or obsessing over Etsy, Flickr, et al.-- in the itty-bitty smidge of time I've allotted to the clay this week (so far)-- I've been "Varathaning" a few pieces.

Ok, I lied. I haven't been "Varathaning"-- not because "Varathaning" isn't a word (if you're one of those who abhor the trend of hijacking nouns and forcing them to behave like verbs-- such as "journaling", "scrapbooking", and "efforting"). No, it's because (as I was informed on a pc message board) what I use is Minwax Polycrylic (the water-based kind) and that is not the same thing as Varathane.

So, I guess I've really be "Polycrlic-ing" a few pieces. I have no photos (yet), but that shouldn't stop me from writing about them.

One of them is... was, since it's finished, now... an aqua-teal nautilus-shaped spiral-shell pendant. (Actually, I do have a photo of that one... Let me go upload it...)



Ta-da! Ok, nothing too fancy, I guess, but it's not too bad for a failed project that I just made into something else on a sudden whim.

Another thing I "varnished"-- something I'm thinking of adding to Etsy. It's a bit different from anything else I've put there, because it will be a "custom-made" item. Basically, it's a glow-in-the-dark clay shape with a single letter of the alphabet on it in black. (That way, when it's glowing, the letter will stand out in contrast.) I'm thinking of uploading a pic of the one I've made (an "M") and a pic of the alphabet(s) from which the customer may choose. I don't know if there's much of a market for that sort of thing, but hey, it's only .20 to list it once, and maybe... Personalized stuff is popular with some people (particularly people with kids, I think), and kids like things that glow... and one of the two items I've sold was GITD... So I wanted to add one or two more GITD things, anyway... :o)

Everything else I've been varnishing is from my latest batch of "Crackled Inlay" alternative-method beads/pendants. I took my own advice and tried the method of tinting the translucent clay, adhering the metal leaf to that, and cutting shapes from it. At first, I was disappointed to find that the leaf didn't want to cut evenly. It was the same problem I'd had with the inked sheets of clay. Then Donald suggested that I might have better luck if I turned the clay over so that the leafed side was facing up. I tried it-- and I think it did make a little difference. Anyway, it worked well enough that I made a few beads and pendants, just to see how they'd turn out. I think some of them are pretty. I'm looking forward to photographing them. :o)

As a matter of fact, maybe I'll go see about turning one of them into something I can wear tomorrow... :o)

Silver-tone mokume gane

I'd been wanting to make a silver-tone block of mokume gane for a while-- before I came down with the cold. I finally got around to starting it over the weekend, and yesterday I managed to buff up the first batch of beads I made from it. (There's still at least half of it left, unsliced.)


I'm sorry to say that I was a bit disappointed with the results. It's not that they were ugly, but they just didn't have much "pop" to them. Instead of being silver-tone, they're more grey-scale! (g)


Here are a couple of them:

There are a few more photos of this batch up at my Flickr page. (The link's in the column at the right of this page.)

I think part of the problem is that some of the silver (paints and things) turned out to be less silver than grey. Again, they aren't bad... I think part of the problem is that I'd been thinking so long about doing this particular color combination (if I may call such a monochromatic design a "color combo" (g)) that I expected it to "wow" me more than it did.

Well, I have a couple of ideas of different things to try with the rest of the MG block, now that I know I don't care to repeat those results. One thing I want to try is putting the MG over a very heavily glittered bead-- something with the big, chunky glitters I got at Dollar Tree a long time ago. (I tried one with the small holographic glitters in this batch, and while it was ok, I think the chunkier glitter will make a better effect.)