do-over

apparently it's ugly and crumbly day here in the studio.  and cold.

i saw some really inspiring mokume gane on flickr and wanted to try my hand at it again.  for those who don't know, mokume gane is a metal working term.  for polymer clay, you layer different colors of clay into a stack.  then you impress the stack with different tools.  once the stack has its designs, you shave away layers to reveal the different colors and impressions.

i started by using the studio sculpey clay that i was given to try out.  i've had varying results with the clay.  some of it has been a joy to work with.  it conditions well like sculpey, is strong like premo and is able to create really thin strong sheets.  but i've had trouble too.  the longer i've had the clay the less likely it is to condition well.  this morning everything was a crumbly mess.  i will have to write to polyform and let them know about my experiences.

here are the colors with which i started:

the jagged edges of the clay indicate that it was hard to condition.  they should all be nice and smooth.  the chartreuse is a particularly bad offender, but you can see icky edges on the sides of the dark purple too.  i was kind of imagining a color scheme like this:

after i created the mokume stack and shaved away the layers i got this:

holy crap that's ugly!  BLECH!  nothing like the idea in my head!  we call this "polymerde"  after the french "merde"  which is shit.  excuse my french.

i thought the issue might be that i was working out of my comfort zone, color and technique-wise.  but the book came out OK and it's different for me too.

either i have to switch directions or work on something else entirely.  it's too early for a do-over...it's still morning!  ah well.

Comments

[penny]

awww... i don't think it's UGLY! heck, Kevin would LOVE that color combo (as he thinks everything looks better in purple and green - go figure!); but i totally understand being frustrated when something doesn't look in 'real life' like it does in your imaginings ;-)

chin up, girlie!
:-D

[Tara Finlay]

That's not so bad!
Studio Sculpey huh? How did you come into possession of that?
I wonder how the mokume gane would work with a spherical shape? I've often wanted to try something like that with beads but fear distortion in the rolling, and I suck at caning.

[kim]

love those colors.....
xo

[Ma-belette]

Hi Geraldine

Thanks for sharing your experience with us. Recently I bought some Sculpey Studio to make trials for my friends but after baking, the pendant I made, was not that strong and got broken very easily. Did you experience the same ? Tks a lot for your reply - have a nice day
Cecilia