The Return of my Muse...

August has been a whirlwind already! I just dont know what goodness to share first. After focusing primarily on the harp music, my muse wanted to play with mixed media again and she truly outdid herself. Earlier this year Kara at Mother Henna organized a personal healing and inspiration card deck. She did a marvelous job of coordinating between all the artists and we were rewarded with a gorgeous deck of cards. I've been wanting an appropriate place to keep my treasured deck, but just didn't know what I really wanted. My polymer clay was calling me so I went there to start. I love playing with UTEE overtop of my clay to give nice depth to pieces. I began to wonder if I could recreate one of my cards in clay. I started by sculpting out some fish in a pearly orange mix. I added some scales and fin detail then brushed over a layer of a yellow pearlx to make the little guys shimmer. OK, I decided that these were useable. Now I had to make a pond for the little swimmers. My first try, I painted a pond right on the box lid, surrounded it with clay rocks and filled with UTEE. When I baked this one, the UTEE bubbled up really bad. I ended up scraping it all out and redoing. I still had alot of bubbles, but it was ok. Unfortunately the rocks weren't creating a seal and the UTEE was leaking out of the pond and I couldn't achieve the depth I was looking for. It still turned out cute, and you can see the first one in finished form atop the purple box.

My second attempt, I made the blue water out of clay also, made sure I had a good seal around the rock bottoms, and tried again. Success!! Much better level of depth on the orange box topper. I continued to play with the purple box. I used a mixture of 4 or 5 paints to do a mottled background. I made large polymer clay rocks, drilled holes in the bottom corners of the box, and added the rocks for legs.

I added swirls of glue and coated them in 2 colors of glitter. I glued down a braid of fibers to add more texture. On the end of the fibers I tied 2 polymer clay hearts. Finally I added metal word tags such as dream, inspire, hope. Some of the metal tags have a glass bauble glued over them to make them pop.
The orange box was made using many of the same techniques. I used various stamps to add a discreet pattern that adds interest and depth. I sculpted a large goldfish to dangle off the fiber braid end. I added a star crystal to dangle from the middle of the braid, and a small swarovski crystal to brighten up the other end. I used letter stamps to add words as well as metal tag words.





Oops, I almost forgot about the inside. I used sticky backed felt, cut it to size and lined the bottom and sides of both the lid and the base to give a cozy finished look to the project.




So, what do you think? I had so much fun making these because I got to play with paint, clay, stamps and fibers all at once!




Lets see, I have adventures at the fair and an overnight camping trip pictures (I went dragonfly hunting with my camera) to share but I think that will wait until my next post. It seems amazing that its August 6th already. I want the remainder of summer to crawl by because it has been beautifully relaxing and rejuvenating. I do hope all of you are experiencing the same.