Steampunk Heart

After a little break over the holidays, I decided to get back into creating. I took a class from Tejae Floyde a couple of years ago on Encased Hearts, and wanted to try one with a Steampunk theme. The heart is about 3-1/2 to 4 inches tall, and has a little heart encased in it done with a rust technique.

I think the hinge on the back was the trickiest part, since the screws had to be trimmed a little on the inside.

Ornaments

Every year the North Texas Polymer Clay Guild has a December pot luck and swap that usually involves an ornament of some kind. This year since I am still liking fossils, I decided to incorporate them into an ornament of some kind. Usually I make ornaments with faces, but wanted something different for this year. We make 3 for trading, and I will receive 3 different ornaments to take home.

Swaps are wonderful ways to receive art from other artists, and I am looking forward to the swaps for this year.

The small round ones are the ones I will be trading with guild members, and the larger tear drop shapes are done with the addition of encaustic wax, and I will be keeping those for our tree this year.

New Fossils

It has been a long time since I last posted. We have been on vacation to Virginia to see John's family, and we are now back home. My mother-in-law has built a new family room on the back of her house, and commissioned me to do these pieces for her walls. All 3 involve encaustics, and 2 have the fossils done in polymer clay. Only the 2 with the fossils are posted-the other one is an abstract. Now I will have to get these shipped up north.

Andrew's Dinosaurs

For my nephew's birthday his mother is redecorating his room in a dinosaur theme. Andrew will be 8 in November, and is wild about dinosaurs. I have made these 2 encaustic works with polymer clay dinosaurs to go with the new color scheme. I hope he will like them.

The larger one with the single Stegosaurus (Andrew's favorite), is 10 x 10 x 2 inches, and the smaller trio is 8 x 8 x 2 inches. They are done with encaustic wax on a cradle with polymer clay, alcohol inks, and oil paints. I hope he will like them.

Alchemy

Well, I have been working on a piece for an upcoming exhibit, whose theme is "The Alchemy of Encaustic". After talking with my friend Marcia from Houston, it just hit me what to do. I wanted to create a 3D image of an atom with electrons around it, and using wire and polymer clay, came up with this idea. I also used an image transfer and some stamps that I had made for this project.

Wax Play Day

On Saturday my friends Lisa, Carolyn, and Ellen came over to do a little encaustic wax. We had a great time, and finished some wonderful pieces! We turned my kitchen into an encaustic studio with 3 electric griddles, 1 hot plate, torches, heat guns, etc. and spent the entire day doing encaustic wax! Here is one of the pieces I finished, and this time I decided to extend the wax onto the sides of the piece instead of staining the sides of the board. I have several more pieces started, and hopefully will have time to prepare a couple for an upcoming encaustic exhibit at Kilgore College in October.

New Stamps

I have been looking for years to find a solution to getting stamps made from my own designs. Most of the commercial machines out there are just way too expensive for the limited number of stamps I wanted, and some of the old photopolymer texture sheets I have purchased are now too brittle and yellow to use without damaging them. Until now. I have used Ready Stamps in the past to have stamps made, and the rubber was just fine for stamping, but did not work well with clay and encaustic wax. I decided to contact them, and now they are making photopolymer plates in both the hard plastic and soft clear stamps just like the ones in the craft stores. I ordered 4 plates of designs from them, and I am really liking them! They are fabulous in both clay and wax! Here is a photo of some of my doodles and the stamps that were produced. Contact them if you want to have some of your own designs done.