1. What is this technique for ?
If you want to achieve shine on flat pieces but do not want to spend a lot of time in sanding, buffing and varnishing this is one opportunity to achieve shine. The surface you get can easily be mistaken to be glazed if the colors are "right". The technique is relatively easy, and you can achieve very professional looking results with rehearsing.
If you push your finger into polyclay, the picture of your fingerprint is
transferred into polyclay. In this technique the perfectly flat glass is used to texture the surface. So the smoother the tiles you are using the shinier polyclay items you get. As the shine is appearing only where the tile has touched you can achieve some interesting beads that have shiny faces but matt sides (borders).
2. How it is done ?
You need:
- some polyclay
- wooden cocktail sticks
- flat & smooth glazed plaster of paris tiles or glass tiles
- rolling pin (or bottle or something)
- oven & oven thermometer
- time
Condition some polyclay and make a sausage from it. Cut it to pieces that are
about the same size. Make balls out of the pieces. Pierce the bead with a
cocktailstick from the middle and put it in top of the first tile. Press gently.
Continue putting more beads on the tile leaving enough room to beads to
enlarge in the process. When the tile is full put another tile on top of it and
push, gently and firmly. Now roll over it with rolling pin to make the tile
touch all of the beads.
Put in preheated oven (265 Fahrenheit / 130 Celsius) and bake at least 45
minutes. When done, take the tiles out of the oven. WARNING: the tiles absorb
moisture from air so they are really hot when taken out from oven. Be careful
not to burn your precious hands ! You might have to use some force when
separating the tiles, I usually use a ice-cream stick. The beads are easily
removed from the tile with cold water. Just dry them with towel and take the
cocktail sticks out of them when beads are still warm (otherwise they might
break).
If you get only partly shiny surfaces, there are few possible reasons why
that might have happened. The first is that your amount of clay between tiles
was too thin in the first place (the thinner the clay is, the more difficult it
is to get pressure to all of the surface). Or you did not roll over the tiles as
well as you should have. Or, and this is really annoying to notice at this
phase, your tile has some faults in it's glazing...
Few words about colors and clays to choose to this technique:
- You get better success with stiffer clays like Cernit and Fimo
- Choosing colors is essential. The metallic- and pearl- clays work really
well. Use some translucent with them and you get unbelievable results
- If using basic colors (red, blue, yellow etc.) your results might look
little rubbery.
3. Various shapes
When doing this pierced bead flattened you get a shape that is somewhat like
cut apple. Somewhat like this;
If you make a donut from claysnake you get somewhat
indefinite flat donut, the shape is roundish but not round (pressure is making
differences).
4. Uses for the technique
First of all you must look around you and think if there is anything shiny
and flat you would like to imitate. This is the best way to get ideas. I am just
listing some ideas I have used...
- Shiny donuts for necklaces that are stringed with seed beads
- faux abalone slices (graduating colors)
- stained glass- imitations
- Cane slices that have shiny faces to stringed between matt- slices from
the same cane
- Shiny butterflies
- Mosaic pieces
- Adding the thinnest translucent layer on top of previously baked flat
objects. If you use the thinnest possible sheet and some extra pressure
(weight on top of your tile) you sometimes get really interesting results.
And here are some pictures of my shiny things...
