Polymer Cafe Magazine for February is On the Shelves Now!

Here is a sneak peak of what you can find on pages 28 through 31 in this February's issue of
Polymer Cafe Magazine.

I'm really excited about this technique, It is making it so much easier to deal with teeny sculpted flowers. I am using my nail techniques with the polymer clay.... so


what I've been doing with acrylic liquid and powder on my nails.....


we can now do with polymer clay!!!


Like this!

Or like this!
This is the same technique I did for
Polymer Cafe Magazine,
but done in colour instead of metal tone.

Get your copy of Polymer Cafe quick!!!
and let me know how it works for you and your projects.
I love the feedback it makes me a better teacher.

Gisele of
http://www.giselecrafts.com

Made my Singing Angel From the Christmas issue of Polymer Cafe and set me this fabulous pic of her piece sitting on the magazine shot of my piece. Looks like they're old friends having a chat and a giggle.

I LOVE IT!!!!
Thanks so much Gisele.
Was great to meet minds with you.

UV Gel Eye Test Piece

Here is the test eye I made from the UV gel .
I think I like the other one better. This eye seemed to grab hold of the paint and not let go. It got cloudy after baking also. I like the technique but like the polyclay technique better.

Same as before, I made an indent using a pencil to accept the eye.

Here is the eye in the clay.

Some lid worms are added.

Lid worms are smoothed with knitting needle then smooth flat paintbrush. I also added an eye pin so I could add some dangles later. I baked the piece at 250 for ten minutes.

Some Genesis colour is added. then the piece is baked again for five minutes.

I added more detailed paint but pretty much know at this point that this technique for eye making isn't going to work as well as the other. I baked it again for another five minutes to set the pigment.

I decided to frame the piece in bugle beads.

I added an amber dangle.

and as always a bow.

Here is the finished piece.

Polymer Clay Eye Test Piece

I thought I'd better test bake a couple of the eyes I've been working on to see how well they make out in the oven. I've had terrible experiences when I've not done tests with pieces being ruined with oven heat, either melting or yellowing.

Here is the test for the polymer clay eye I did with Genesis paint. Keep in mind that the over all sculpted piece is no more than two cm wide, the eyes themselves are a half to three quarters of a cm . Also keep in mind that this is a rough test, there are fibers from my sweater and fingerprints in my work and they're staying there. I will take great care in the finished work but with tests I don't like to waste the time.

I started by filling the indent of this pretty metal finding with Fimo soft and smoothing it over by rubbing gently with my fingertips.
I got the metal finding from
Snapcrafty

I used a pencil end to create an indent that was roughly the same size as an eye ball.

I added the eye ball.

Added a worm of clay for the top eyelid.

and another worm for the bottom eyelid.

I used a knitting needle to smooth out the join lines in the clay and start to sculpt out the shapes I want.

I used a small flat soft paintbrush to smooth out the whole thing so there were less tool marks and fingerprints. Then I baked it at 250 for ten minutes.

Here I've added some blush to the brow ridge and the cheek area using genesis heat set oil paint. The eye has made it through one oven test and come through with flying colours, there isn't any yellowing or melting. I baked it again for five minutes to set the blush.

Here is the painted piece. I'm pretty impressed with this technique for eye making. I can go back now and make more eyes with greater detail.

I cut out a piece of black felt the same size as the back of the piece and sewed some lace to the edge of it.

Then I glued the metal finding to the felt.

I added some beads and a bow.

and I tried out some options for wearing the piece.

This is what we went with.
Maggs has taken ownership of this one.

DIY eyes for BJD Using Polymer Clay

I want to try a few different tests for home made eyes to see what works best for me.

Here are some made from white Fimo, polymer clay.
I used Genesis heat set oils to paint the colour onto the eyeball, but you can use acrylic. I'm just using what I have.
I top coated each eye in clear gel topcoat and cured under a UV lamp.

I made a few different sizes of polymer clay balls. I tried to make sure I had matching pairs.

I put each ball onto the end of a bit of armature wire and embedded it into a hunk of clay so it would stand up nicely and I could paint them.
I baked them at 250 for 10 minutes and let them cool.

I painted some colour onto each eye trying to make matching pairs. This is harder the smaller the eye is, and these are teeny! I baked them for another 10 minutes and let them cool again.

I gave them all a couple coats of clear UV gel and cured them in the lamp for two minutes each coat.
Can't wait to try them out.

DIY Eyes For BJD Using UV Nail Gel.

I decided to try to make my own eyes for my BJD sculpt.
I may try a few different mediums and techniques until I get one I'm happy with. Here is the first try. I used UV Gel for nail extensions to make little eyeball blobs. I kind of like these. We'll see if I can improve on them a bit.

Here is what I did.

First I stuck some nail form foils to a sheet of scrap paper. I figured this would keep them flatter than if I just left them on the roll.

I made blobs of white gel using the tip of a knitting needle (It's what I had lying around) and cured them in the UV light.

Then I made dots of dark green and light green onto the white blobs and cured this also.

Here I tried a dot of blue in the middle of each eye. I liked it but it wasn't dark enough. I cured them again.

Here is a side shot so you can see the profile of the eyes. They're quite 3D already.

Here they are with a coat of top coat UV gel on them. This should seal the colour in an make them have more depth and shine.
I cured them again.

I cured them in the light one final time after I flipped each eye over. Because the white gel is opaque the UV light doesn't get through to the middle of each eye, flipping them over allows them to cure on the bottom too.

Here are two of the eyes. I didn't match them for size but they look pretty good. I think I'll have to experiment with this technique some more. It has promise.

Skully Cameo Bracelete Tutorial

We've been itching to use the new skull cameos we got from

Snapcrafty.

Maggs figured she needed a new bracelet so we made one.

Hope you like it too.

Things you'll need:

one piece of felt
floss to match the felt and two other colours for leaves and flower buds
pinking shears
sewing needle
E6000 jewelry glue
a large cameo

We cut two pieces of felt larger than the cameo using the pinking shears, we gave them about a one cm border.
on one of the pieces we glued the cameo trying to center it as much as possible.
We set it aside to dry, and put the other piece of felt in a safe place.

After the piece had dried we used the embroidery floss to stitch some leaves (lazy daisy stitch)
and some flower buds (French knots) around the top corner of the cameo.

We sewed some fancy elastic lace to the back edge of the felt oval and then sewed the other black oval to the back of the piece. This covers all the stitches on the back, makes it much neater.

We made a little satin bow and sewed it to the bottom of the cameo.

For the band of the bracelet, we cut two rectangles of felt with pinking shears that were three cm longer than our wrist measured and five cm wide. We cut the corners off of one end of each strip.
We sandwiched the elastic lace inside the two strips so it went along one side turned the end and went along the other edge. We sewed it all in place with matching thread.

We used green floss and made lazy daisy stitch leaves around the edge of the band.
None of these decorative stitches went through both layers of felt. I didn't want to see the stitches from the wrong side.

Then we used the stem stitch to make a vine that attached the leaves.

Last we made the flower buds using the french knot.

We used black thread to sew the band onto the back of the cameo felt.

Sew three snaps onto the end of the band and the matching snaps to the back of the cameo and you're done!
You can use Velcro instead if it's easier.

Looks pretty good!
May need some beads, I'm not sure yet.

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If you have a question about this project, please comment on my contact page.