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Sunday, November 14, 2010

The Joy of Metal Clay - Texture



One of the things I love about metal clay is its ability to take texture. There are tons of textures out on the market and many things you can use to texture your clay. After I took my first metal clay class I found myself thinking about all the things that I could use to texture my metal clay.




This past week our Metal Clay Group had a visit from Helen Breil a polymer clay artist and designer of fabulous textures. She spoke to our group about ways to make our own textures using polymer clay. She offers tutorials on creating your own textures at her website.







Here are some other easy ways to texture you can texture your metal clay (here I test the textures on some plasticine, yes I use other clays to test out textures as to not dry out my silver clay experimenting):



An onion bag and metal screening








The edge of a piece of lasagna...









Rice

(You can leave rice or the alphabet pasta on the beginning photo on the clay as it will just burn out in the kiln)





Just a screw














How about a screwdriver


There are endless possibilities. Look around, leaves, bottle tops, buttons and more. Fabric, lace, wallpaper, ribbons, even fancy papers...(I will use spray acrylic on some papers to preserve it and allow it to stand up a better)


Take a piece of cardboard and a hot glue gun and drizzles a crazy pattern, let it set and there you go.



Carve an eraser, linoleum.



Go crazy and have fun!!!!


1 comment:

Gail Bryant said...

I often look at 2nd-hand stores for texture ideas too. And Fabricland has a wonderful selection of buttons - some of them have great textures. FUN!