CO Mixed Media Club, March meeting - polymer clay tiles and collage

This month, our project (lead by Susan) was making and incorporating polymer clay tiles into collage.

I have a love/hate relationship with polymer clay. I like the results but just find it too time consuming to bother with (the conditioning, rolling, forming, baking, and sometimes sanding is just too much).

But here I am happily smushing my rubber stamps into clay.

This is the one I was smushing. I cut it into a couple different rectangular tiles.

Here is the gang working hard. Laurie, Sidran, and Susan.

And Trish and Enid.

Here you can see the start of Enid's piece with painted sea and sky. I wish I took a picture with the cool boat she was planning to collage onto it.

The green tiles are Enid's, for her ocean themed collage.  The hands and black tile are mine.

 Here are some of my black tiles with gold Rub-n-Buff, and one with turquoise patina.

Here is Sidran's collage in progress, with polymer clay face.

Here is a collage of Trish's.

 Trish's second collage with polymer clay tile (center bottom).

Susan's tree, with polymer clay faces and star.

A collage in progress by Laurie.

Laurie's collage, I think the 3D pieces are wood. I know Laurie did some polymer clay pieces, but don't have pictures of them.

I didn't get around to the collage part, I just played with clay all day! I made some cute little houses, but didn't take pictures of them.  A fun clay play day!

Mosaic tile picture frame

For my parents' 50th wedding anniversary, my sister and I decided to make a mosaic tile picture frame. My sister made a lot of the tiles and did the assembling, but I made and mailed her some tiles to use. I used either Sculpey III or Fimo Soft polymer clay, depending on the tile.

These were white tiles stamped with rubber stamps, then painted with acrylic after they were baked. Some of the details I painted a darker color first, then "dry brushed" with paint on my finger to apply the light color to the raised sections. I did do a lot of touch up with a small brush afterwards.

These were gold clay stamped with a rubber stamp, then "dry brushed" with metallic blue paint on top after they were baked, then dusted with gold powder (similar to Pearl Ex, but mine are called Fairie Dust).

I am not too fond of these pink flower tiles. Mod Podge makes hot melt glue sticks and molds to be used with these glue sticks.  I found it hard to get the molds filled well. I glued them to already baked polymer clay tiles and painted them with acrylic paint and applied a russet colored shimmer powder.  The backs of the flowers are somewhat lumpy so they are not completely flat with the face of the tile. I do think these flowers would work well on some of my  Day of the Dead skulls.

If you decide to try the Mod Podge glue sticks, please note the following, these are hot melt glue sticks. They really need to be used with silicone molds. There are other brands of low temp glue sticks that can be used with rubber stamps and other molds, but do not use the Mod Podge glue sticks with these.

For these, I embossed copper and brass metal sheets with embossing folders and my Wizard (similar to a Cuttlebug). I then used double stick tape to attach each to a piece of mat board, then folded the edges around to the back of the board.

All of the polymer clay tiles (not the embossed metal ones) were given a coat of Galaxy Gloss to give them a shiny finish.

I also made the alphabet tiles and some gold "grout" sticks, but forgot to take pictures before I mailed them.

I love the Laurie Mika book "Mixed Media Mosaics", which is what I used as a reference for my polymer clay tile making.

Here are some progress photos my sister sent.

And the framed almost completed.

Finished! Happy 50th Mom and Dad!

Day of the Dead Mosaic

I am working on some Day of the Dead inspired mosaics. Here is one completed piece. I had quite a few handmade polymer clay tiles in my stash, but also included some store bought ceramic and glass tiles.

The center image is a old printing plate. The center girl has a three dimensional skull head, and I though the other girls needed skulls as well so I painted over them. The frame was meant to have tiles around the outside and has a separate frame edge for a photo in the center, but I glued the printing plate over that opening.

This really motivates me to make some more polymer clay tiles (until I remember all the difficulties I had with polymer clay!).