This is your weekly WAYWO diary; a place to share and promote your creative projects. Whether your creativity is expressed in clay, yarn, paper, ink, paint, writing, cloth, metal, topiary, stone, tofu ... the WAYWO Group wants to hear from you! Strut your stuff in the comments or boldly volunteer to host one of these weekly diaries yourself. Joining the group is easy! Simply contact our fearless leader. There's also a Yahoo Group which sends one reminder/week, and may be used to post when the diary is up.
This is my first WAYWO diary. I've always been intimidated by those of you who work with fabric and yarn, two things I couldn't do if my life depended on it. But I have been encouraged by this group about my jewelry and polymer clay work. Being a writer at heart, I volunteered to show off my avocation -- which I occasionally earn a few dollars with. I was unsure of what to feature here but finally decided to go with the polymer clay. So, without further ado....
I wanted to fancy-up a wine glass similar to what I had seen on Pintrest so I began with a simple wine goblet. I marked a line inside using a dry-erase marker. This is to keep the clay lined up as I placed it on the outside of the glass:
Line on the inside
I mixed green and yellow in different ratios to make these 3 greens:
Three colors of green
I rolled the three balls of clay into snakes, then marked them off at 1/8" so all the leaves would be the same size. Using a clay cutter, I chopped the snake into 16 pieces and then rolled each piece into a teardrop shape, pulling the smaller end into a point:
Pull into a teardrop
I took the cutter and gently flattened the teardrop:
Flatten the teardrop
Now I had a nice leaf shape. I pressed it onto the glass, aligning the top with the line I drew inside. I continued with the first, lightest color until I encircled the glass. Once I had placed all the leaves, I added the lines with a needle:
First layer of leaves
Then I moved on to the next darker shade and repeated the process, placing these leaves in between the lighter ones. Then I added the lines to them. I did this again with the darkest green. Once I placed all the leaves, I went over them and made sure they were placed securely and fixed any lines that may have been messed up.
All three layers in place
Next I made a thin snake out of the darkest green and coiled it around the glass stem, pressing it onto the glass gently as I went. I brought the end down onto the base of the glass and used a knitting needle to curl it (see, I can use them for something!). I did this two more times. If you are doing this, if you like, you can just cover the stem with green clay and terminate it into 4 points on the base.
Thin snakes on the stem for tendrils
Once all the leaves and tendrils were where I wanted them, I placed the glass in a baking dish and baked it at 350° for 30 minutes. Since the glass and the clay cool at different rates, it is important to leave the piece in the oven, turn the heat off and let it cool in there. Once it was cool, I painted on a coat of varnish with glitter, making sure not to get it on the glass. The finished product:
Et voila!
This month I have been doing a lot of clay on glass pieces. Small oil bottles like this:
Mokume Gane covered oil bottle
And some spice bottles:
Black, white and translucent bullseye cane-covered bottle
Some of these went out as Christmas gifts. Some may be put up on ebay or my etsy shop (if I ever get around to updating it). Wherever they end up, I enjoy making them. The planning - which colors? What kind of pattern? On what kind of glassware? - the zen activity of conditioning and rolling out the clay, the geometric thinking that goes into building a cane, the concentration of slicing - trying to be consistent and not take a pinky off with the tissue blade - the entire project is a meditation. I really enjoy putting my MP3 player on shuffle and letting it go while I work. But I can even work while the family is watching TV because I make my own little world while I'm working.
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So, what are you working on?