Good Morning! It's Monday, and I thought it would be fun to show you how you can use waterslide transfer paper with polymer clay. I have used this product for a while now in my art work, and just started using it to transfer copies of my drawings. Here are some basic tools that you will need:
White, Translucent, or light colored Polymer Clay
Clay Pasta Machine
Clay Blade
Convection oven used just for Clay
Blank Waterslide Transfer Inkjet Paper Pack , or a set that already has images
Liquid Polymer Clay ( I use translucent Liquid Sculpey)
Water (In a spray bottle or with some q-tips)
Paint Brush you don't mind messing up
Scissors
Something to bake on: I use a white ceramic tile, and wax paper.
I use the Blank Waterslide Transfer Paper (created by Lisa Pavelka) to print my own images.I also used the pasta machine to roll out a gumball sized piece of translucent polymer clay. For this project, I rolled it on the thinnest setting, which is different depending on your machine. Mine is size 9. Also before starting, I make sure to turn my convection oven on to preheat.
Once I have the images, I begin by cutting them out. You will want to leave a small blank edge around your image so that it will adhere to the clay better.
Next, I put the images face down onto the rolled out polymer clay. I also press the images down into the clay with my fingers (not enough to dent the clay).
Once all of the images that I want to bake are on the clay, I used my mist bottle, filled with water, and sprayed the entire piece of clay with the images. If you don't have a mist bottle, you could use water with a q-tip to cover the images. Using enough water and waiting 30-60 seconds, you will begin to see them images through the paper backing.
If you plan to only bake one image, or want to use the image as a pair of earrings, you might want to cut around the image using a clay blade before taking the paper backing off with water. Still make sure to leave enough clay around the edge of the image to use it how you would like, and so the image wont peel up during baking!
Then, you can start gently sliding the paper right off of the clay and image(s).
Once you have all of the paper backing off of the clay, it's time to use the liquid polymer clay, and a paint brush. I use my paint brush to spread the liquid clay evenly over all of the images. If there is any water left on your clay, make sure to gently dab it up with a paper towel or your finger before adding the liquid clay.
Once the clay is completely covered, it will look like this, and be ready to bake.
While this was baking for about 25 minutes, I worked on some other projects, and cleaned my work space!
Now that the clay is baked: Take it out to cool.
This is an additional step - not required - I decided to cut the smaller top half of the clay with my clay blade while it was still hot, to have it all fit in this small container (pictured below). Before taking the clay out of the oven, I grabbed a tupperware container that I have used only for clay before, and filled it with cold water. Sometimes I also add ice cubes. I took the clay out of the oven, and instead of letting it cool off for a while, I dumped/submerged it into the water very quickly. This helps translucent clay cool more evenly, quickly, and sometimes helps you avoid possible "artifacts" in the clay that will make it less translucent.
Once the clay is cool, I cut around the images, again leaving some space around the edges. You will cut your images out differently depending on what you are going to use them as.
I will be using these small glasses images on some clay figures, so I don't need much clay around the edge of the image. If I were to use these as earrings, I might cut these into larger rectangles, and add a hole to one end for earring wires.
And there you have it! My image is now ready to use. And I can cut all of the images out so they are ready for future artwork. One more tip, when you use this transfer paper, you can not cut through the image once it is baked.
Here is another image that I baked, over one of my magnets. These pictures aren't the best, but you should be able to see the translucency here.
If you got through reading my "how to", let me know what you think! Comment Below.
If you have any questions about using polymer clay, or want to see a "how to" using other polymer clay techniques, let me know also!
Remember to enter my giveaway (posted Friday), you have until Wednesday morning!
0 comments:
Post a Comment