Art Party II Fimo

Great day making art in the kitchen with family and Friends

Sarah Beth and Jennifer in the process of creating. Make certain to warm the clay up and condition it as well as running it through the pasta maker. The worst thing that can happen it seems is that your piece might get a little thin and then have a tendency to crack, but if prepared properly- the items are quite durable once cured in the dedicated toaster oven. The bake time varies and the packages usually comes with a suggested time, and there are many tutorial on Pinterest.com. Most of the clays were purchased at area craft stores including www.hobbylobby.com, www.michaels.com, and www.joanns.com. These stores also carry a variety of items for scratching, scraping, texturing, and detailing the polymer clay.

Sarahbeth used a pearlescent clay and she also made a variety of beads. She filled a Vintage blank with clay and created a design and hung it on a Vintaj brass chain. We all used a variety of tools to scratch and a variety Pearl-Ex pigments to add a metalic glisten and iridescence. It really is simple. Just do what you feel.

Clay cut with Makins cutters

Jennifer's iridescent hearts were created with an orchid colored polymer clay (most brands work just fine, and we used a variety including Fimo, Sculpey, Viva, Kato- in a variety of treatments from regular to souffle to iridescent. She added the pearlescense with Pearl-ex pigment. We just played with what we had. Everyone brought a little and we shared. So easy and fun. Jennifer cut her shapes using small clay metal cutters from Makins, but any type metal-edged or sharp wooden edge cutter would work.

 

A closeup of Jessica's leaves. She used a paper piercer for creating the holes and scratching the veins on the leaves. It is very important to leave the hole in the size you need for attaching to a cord, chain or jump ring.

Feather stamped on clay before baking

 A closeup of my feather. I used a stamp to make the outline and detail of the feather. Then I cut it out with a craft knife, and scratched the detail with a paper piercer or ice pick like tool.

Jess displays her Fimo creations at the Second Art party. This one was hosted by us. We really have got this thing going for real now. Sarah Beth's was in June. We created different paper creations. This one we used some of my Fimo supplies and toys like the dedicated pasta maker and toaster over that will not heat so high that it burns the Fimo. I have had this stuff sitting around for years and was afraid to crack it open. With the support of my nieces Jennifer and Sarah Beth, and my daughter Jessica. It was a great success. We all made something, and we discovered that using bakeable clay is not really hard at all. It was more fun to get everything out with several people using it.

Leave the campsite better than you found it!

Inexpensive or free ways to give back to the world community:

Just Received the Best Christmas Card Ever:

It's the gift that keeps on giving.

Just received a Christmas card from my sister, Barbara Pierce Ruffner and her husband, Boyd Ruffner, and on the outside of the envelope it ays a gift has been given in your name. The card was from www.worldvisiongifts.org. Four chickens have been given in my name. This made me very happy. I have always wanted to donate to this organization, and never did so I stopped receiving their materials. My daughter raises chickens, and I know she gets enough eggs to sell to local restaurants, and they all love the eggs, and the cooks say they are the best they have ever used, and the patrons love them. There is something just better about free-range chicken eggs. Anyway I hope the family enjoys their new chickens and wish both them and the chickens good health.

Create a bookplate to donate a book in honor of someone to the library:

Other small ways you can make a difference in your own community are donating current hardback fiction books to the library- small towns usually have smaller budgets, and on the occasions that I am not able to find a new hardback at my library or get tuck in an airport without something to read and am forced to pay full price for a book- I read it, and then donate the book to the local library in my mother's name. She loved reading and wanted to be a librarian, and one of her sisters was actually a librarian at The Library of Congress. So to honor my mother- I put a bookplate in a hardback book and write on their donated by Margaret Esther Pierce or Donated in memory of: Margaret Esther Pierce- downloadeable links from http://www.marthastewart.com

You create this one with stamps:

http://www.marthastewart.com/252680/personalized-bookplates#252680;

This one just uses an easy download from Martha Stewart and then is printed on your home inkjet and then glued on with acid free glue. For complete instructions see:

http://www.marthastewart.com/269870/homemade-bookplates

http://images.marthastewart.com/images/content/web/pdfs/pdf2/msl_oct02_bookplates.pdf

This little photo was probably one of the last times I did a giant Christmas tree- now because of my kittehs, and because all my fledglings have left the nest- I just do the large entertainment center mantle, as well as a Norfolk pine.

I am just getting started with my blog. I hope to continue. I don't know exactly what my focus will be, but since the title of my Blog is At Random- that's probably what you will get- Random thoughts, ideas, how-to's- whatever kind of like, 'Hey look there's a squirrel.' Oh yeah and cats-lots of cats- there must be cats and gardening and repurposing, and my journey toward adopting a vegetarian lifestyle. Kind of Cracker-queen, boujie, southern princess fifth generation Texan, without the redneck- more like a Renaissance of the way things used to be with a little nail polish and grey hair thrown in. Well, there may be a little country because I love Longhorn cows, and SMU Mustangs and old barns and trucks and cowboys and farmhouses and urban and rural farming. Stay free and live wild. Peggy