Oct 1, 2008
I’m making lots of new beads, getting ready for the upcoming shows and sales and beading season. Time for more beads!! Hand beads are always popular, so I’m making them in several styles–blue tattooed, shown here, mehndi (henna) tattoos, and Victorian. I do love dressing the hands up in little sleeves…but these with the blue tattoos are a lot of fun also. These are decorated with dye ink, and are the only style done in this manner—the others make use of millefiore canes and impressions, not stamps. These beads and others are available for purchase through my etsy store.
Aug 17, 2008
Book Cover–Making Faces Molds & Forms, originally uploaded by sarajane helm.
This is the front cover of my newest book–“Making Faces Molds & Forms”
It is a how-to guide to sculpting faces from polymer clay and using 2part RTV silicones to make molds; and thats just a start! Then I show how to use the molds to make many different faces, and use them in doll making, altered art, collage, jewelry, and more.
This book will debut in late October 2008, in time for the International Quilt Festival in Houston Texas.
(Its ALMOST finished!!)
Jul 25, 2008
I went to Jackson Mississippi and conducted a week long seminar at Tougaloo College Summer Art Colony where we explored the uses of polymer clay. We had a wonderful time!
The only “downside” to the week were travel oriented, and even that wasnt too unexpected or awful. My luggage is ALWAYS gone through, so I’m careful to put all my blades in metal tool boxes (lunchboxes from
American Science and Surplus ) that have a flat magnet on the lid. Meant to hold a business card, I put these magnets on the inside of the lid, and they do a great job of holding all the extremely sharp blades flat to the surface so that nobody gets hurt. The pointed sticks, though, people will just have to watch for themselves when rummaging through my things. And the multiple X-Acto knives, and the cookie cutters…. Ok, so I have potentially dangerous luggage. I find it to be MOST dangerous when I’m hauling both 49 pound check-in bags and my 30 pound carry-on and the ten pound purse by myself across the concourse, trying to make it to the next stop. A pasta machine can leave a pretty good bruise, if you arent carefull! But the BIGGEST danger was to my luggage itself this time. After 5 years of vigorous travel experiences, my favorite toolbox got a little smashed. Its fixable—just a few pieces broke, includint the nose of the face. I was wondering when it WOULD break, actually! We tell students about “The ToyBox Test” in which I rated the strenghths of various brands of clay by making miniature teapots and putting them in my son’s toybox with the tonka trucks, etc. and then checking on them several weeks later. The FIMO and CFC (this became Premo) teapots were OK, the Cernit teapot had a ding in its spout, and the Sculpy teapot was some colorful chunky dust on the bottom of the box. This test can also be done as The Bottom Of The Purse Test for those without a toybox and helpful assistants. Or, The Airport Test! This Premo clay made it through quite a few trips before coming to its smashing conclusion. And since I felt a little bashed myself (can they MAKE those airplane aisles and seats any narrower??) I do understand!
Jun 14, 2008
Here’s a link to a brand new page with the mosaic table Bryan just finished. There’s a LITTLE bit of polymer clay in this one–but mostly stone and ceramic with crystal glazes. It ended up looking kinda like a game board! It has all the beautiful pieces swimming permanently in a poured two part epoxy resin surface. The picture shown here is of one corner of the table. Featured are crystal glazed tiles created by master crystalierre and potter Fara Shimbo.
http://polyclay.com/epoxyresin.htm
Jun 6, 2008
We’ve had rain all the first part of this week, and we needed the moisture. It is beautiful in a sunny way today, and we’re starting into the annual dyeing days! Today is prep day–I’ll be mixing dyes, and getting them into the bottles. I just ran off the sheets of labels for the plastic bottles. This year we have:
#03 Golden Yellow
#05 Soft Orange
#8A Pagoda Red
#09 Scarlet
#13 Fuchsia Red
#14A Hot Pink
#15 Amethyst
#18A UltraViolet
#19 Plum
#19A Lilac
#21 Teal Blue
#23 Cerulean Blue
#25 Turquoise
#27 Midnight Blue
#28A AquaMarine
#37 Bronze
#44 BetterBlack
#45 Jungle Red
#47 Chartreuse
#50 JadeGreen
#60 Lavender
#62 PeacockBlue
#64 Orchid
#96 Lapis
#97 Citrus Yellow
#105 Pewter
#111 Black Cherry
#112 Periwinkle
#113 GoldenBrown
#115 Eggplant
#118 Yucca
#312 Strongest Red
#510 Basic Brown
We use Procion MX series coldwater fiber reactive dyes. We’ve found that labeling the bottles after mixing them up makes it easier to tell what’s what, when you have lots of colors. We also have bagged swatches (that’s the picture at top) so that we know how the color is going to come out, mostly.
Another good tip I’ll share with you is to mix your dyes with water and then pour through a coffee filter into the bottle, that way those pesky little red or turquoise spots are not a problem.
This year I’m dyeing lots more pieces of turned wood, because I LOVE how last years batch turned out. No ribbons this year–I did a lot of them last year.
They went into the current crop of Spirit Doll Kits along with the cotton and silk fabrics, and polymer clay faces. I’m selling them on Etsy.comwhich is an on-line site presenting handmade and vintage items. I’ll be adding lots more items in the upcoming weeks as I clean out the studio and help fund upcoming shows and projects.
I’ll also be dyeing some t shirt dresses and shorts for my own summertime wardrobe, and backdrop and curtain fabric that will be used in the Aunt Acid Show. They WERE beige muslin–how drab!! They were great when I did out door shows and needed backdrops that did not compete with the displays. But for this particular show, we can take LOTS of color. I’ve been gluing mosaic set pices, and things are coming along splendidly in a visual sense. Now for another big dose of color, and we’ll be onward into the Summer of More Love…and we happen to love art and music and humor, so I’d say these good times to “Be Happening”.
Speaking of summer time fun, I’ll be teaching a week long seminar on using dyed fabrics and polymer clays to make spirit dolls, icons, and masks this summer at Tougaloo College Summer Art Colony. July in Mississippi is time for some HOT ART!!
