Glazed flowers

Links for the supplies will connect you to my Hubby's shop if you are looking for these products.

Thank you so much for supporting myself and my family.



Flowers and leaves cutter set (The cutters I used for this project are shown below)

Cernit Porcelain white 2 ounce package will make several flower and leaf sets
Air Brush Exciter Packs Metallic and Transparent

Small brushes

Ultimate Clay Machine or acrylic roller

Small knife (not a razor type knife)

Bic Round Stic pen

Condition and roll out the porcelain white on the thickest setting in the clay machine or 1/8" thick or a little thinner.

Cut out the 4 petals and score them with a small knife. Do not cut through them, just score them to make the lines in the petal.

Cut out the leaves and score the veins in each leaf, start with the center vein and then cut the side veins.

Cut the back flower out of the rolled out porcelain white Cernit. It is the large cutter with 5 petals shown above.

Lay down the 5 petal flower first and then place the leaves where you want them.
Press the very bottom of the stems on to the 5 petal flower.

Now add the 4 marked petals to the back flower.

Roll a 3/8" ball of the porcelain Cernit clay and flatten a little with your thumb and forefinger.

Add to the center of the petals. Poke several holes in the center.

Bake the flower in a 275 degree pre-heated oven for 30 minutes, shut off oven and let the flower cool in there.

I used these colors to paint the flower and leaves.

I let the paint dry completely and then coated with the air brush varnish.

You can also heat set this paint by placing in a pre-heated 200 degree oven for 15 minutes and let it cool completely before touching it at all.

Transparent yellow is used for the petals and the metallic yellow is used for the center.

These flower and leaves sets make nice embellishments for scrapbooking, journals, and jewelry, decorating mirrors and pots etc...etc...etc...

The Air Brush Exciter Packs are a newly listed product for my Hubby's store. 

There are 3

opaque

transparent

metallic

http://www.clayfactory.net/

Another extruder trick- making rope

As long as I am on the extruder thing, I thought I would post this. You can use this for twisted beads using the bead corers if you want, but I am just going to show how to make a rope the easy way.

Mix up and condition your color choice of clay. I am using the violet Cernit mixed 1:1 with the

porcelain white Cernit, 1. because I had it left over from the cloisonne beads I made before and 2. because the violet color of Cernit is so wonderfully beautiful.

Roll out a little coil or plug of clay that is about 2 1/2" long and slightly smaller in diameter than the inside diameter of the Makin's Clay Extruder barrel. You will also need the cloverleaf disk that comes with the Clay Extruder.

Put the disk in to the end cap and the clay in to the barrel, put the end cap and disk on the end of the clay extruder and screw it on.

Screw down the handle of the extruder until the clay starts coming out the end of the extruder, continue until you have extruded all of the clay out of the gun. It does about 12". Cut in to 4" pieces for easier control and to practice with. Hold one end of the extruded cloverleaf and with your other hand and roll the other end gently away from you. This will twist up the cloverleaf and you will have a rope just like that.

You can use these for all kinds of things, beads, like I said before or making into shapes. I am sure there are tons of other things you can come up with using this rope.

Here is a heart I made out of this rope.

Also you can use it to wrap around cut out shapes. When I used to make custom wedding couples many years ago they would stand on a large cut out heart and I would wrap this rope coil around the heart to camouflage the cut edges...and besides that it looked very cool. I love those 2 birds, one stone things.

So if you condition your clay and roll it out on the thickest setting in your pasta machine or about an 1/8" thick and fold the clay in half to double the thickness, then you can cut out a shape with a cutter. The cutter I am using here is a 1" round Kemper cutter, yes, you heard me right they make them now. Sometimes Howard needs to be booted in the pants to get him load things up on the website, so you just write him at order(at)clayfactory.net and tell him you would love to have one of those 1" round kemper cutters. Substitute that word (at) for the sign. Tell him Marie sent you.

Once you have the shape, then you take the rope and place it around the shape. Cut the leading edge of the rope with your clay blade for straight edge first.

Wrap completely around the shape and the end of the coil will overlap the beginning end of the coil. Cut off the outside one there and butt the edges together, I used to do this on the hearts and begin and end the rope in between the lobes of the heart.

I hope you all are have a GREAT weekend.

Cloisonne type beads

OK, this is what I was leading up to.

You take an 1/8 block of 7 colors of Cernit, violet, blue, light green, yellow, orange, red, and turquoise and you mix it, 1 part to 1 part, with 010 white (porcelain). Mix the clay completely till it is one color. Take a 3/4" ball of each of the colors and roll into a coil that is 3 1/2" by 1/4" in diameter.

Place a small amount of Aztec Gold Pearl-ex powder on to a paper plate and spread out the powder a little to take out the clumps and get a thin coating on the paper plate. Start with one coil and roll the coil into the thin layer of powder until it is completely covered on the outside of the coil. Spread out some more of the powder if you need to. Rub the powder in and the excess off of each coil. Now do this to all of the other colors. I place all of my powder covered coils on to a piece of typing paper.

With a clay blade cut each of the powder covered coils in half and flatten one of the halves in to a teardrop shape.

Here are all of the coils after I have covered them with Aztec Gold Pearl-ex powder. Now wash your hands really well or change gloves if you wear them. Get yourself an old towel to wipe your hands off with later too.

Now mix 1/2 block caramel Cernit with 1/2 block of yellow Cernit till it is one color. Flatten it out with your fingers and roll this out in your pasta machine on the thickest setting, fold the sheet in half to double the thickness, and cut out circles with a round 1/2" cutter. Roll the 1/2" ones into balls and set them aside. Using the 2nd cutter (middle one) from a Makin's Clay 3 piece round cutter set, cut out some of those, roll those in to balls and then roll them in to teardrops. Flatten the teardrops until they are about 1/4" thick.

Now take the little coils and slice off 1/16" to 1/8" thick slices of the colored powder covered coils with a clay blade. Put the slices on the ochre colored balls and teardrops to form images or patterns. Press the slices gently into place on the balls and teardrops. Wipe your hands every so often to take off the excess powder. I do not like to over lap the slices, but sometimes it might work out that way. But mostly it is one level of slices on the beads.

Here is a tray of beads ready to go into the oven.

You just never know, I might even make something out of these.

Mixing with 010 or what I call the porcelain white Cernit

When you want to have the color of Cernit (the new formulation) more intense, brighter, and a little lighter after baking (they will darken quite a bit, nature of the clay and it's porcelain effect) and more like the package color that you see. I like to mix it with the 010 white. This is kind of confusing but awesome once I get adjusted to their way of thinking. The Cernit company’s clays are meant to look like porcelain clay and they have a porcelain look to them. It is very close to using a translucent clay. The more I work with this feature instead of fighting it, the better my work looks in it (imho). I will sometimes take a color, say yellow and mix it with a small amount of opaque white 029 and then leave some not mixed with anything and then mix some of the yellow one to one with the porcelain white 010, now I have 3 variations of the same color and when baked they all work together (after all, they are the same color, wonderful for those of you that think you don't know how or are afraid to mix colors), but I have a variation of the same color for a more dramatic effect, as in the flames of the goblet above. Here is another view of the yellows. I have used more than one yellow color and its variations in the flowers though.

Here is an example of a rainbow of colors mixed one to one with the porcelain white 010 or what they just call white.
It is a little hard to distinguish from this photo but you can see the darkening that takes place when you remember that I mixed them in equal parts with what they call white.
This also means that if you want to have the regular colors be opaque you will have to mix all of the colors with a little of the opaque white 029 or with this clay the lines between the colors in the image cane (even though straight and perfect) will appear to be wispy and unclear. The light plays all the way through the clay like frosted glass in this instance.
Or another way to make fabulous canes, because this new formulation of Cernit canes wonderfully well and slices oh so well, is to outline all of the colors with an opaque color or a very dark color, in this way you are isolating the colors or components of the cane which to me will stop the wispy lines, those crooked lines are made by me not the clay. I do this anyway when I cane so it seems very natural to me. The outside packing of this cane is the porcelain white 010 and Biscuit mixed together.