There’s something always happening in my head – evolutions, adaptations, innovations – that keeps me constantly making changes to the art I produce. Every time I learn a new technique, see a new product, or play in a new medium, there’s a… a twist. I can always see how to connect the new things with my previous things. It’s exhilarating and exhausting, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
This here’s the story of one such evolution! I’ll try not to go too far back along the chain :)
First, I was playing with carving stamps and building wee items out of polymer clay, like this:
I even did a video sharing how I got to that point.
As you can see, my output became increasingly complex. You can barely even see the carved item in that last assemblage piece!
Even with that, most of what I was producing was along the same lines: stamp the clay, cut out a shape, add some wire. No worries, along comes a fun little project making tree ornaments using commercial cut-outs; at the same time I learned how to make a glassy finish (from a tutorial I purchased so I can’t really share that secret), which I tried on these:
My glee was audible. I squealed every time I looked at them. They’re like CANDY. Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee :)
At the show where I was selling these, I was tucked into a corner without much traffic. Not one to sit quietly doing nothing, I spent a lot of two days carving up new stamps! First, I did up a random, linear-type stamp:
Then, a set of radial textures:
The centre of this inspired me to work on a series of circle stamps. I used some doodles I had in an old sketchbook to draw up some ideas:
And carved away! I wanted something chunkier this time so I used the thicker blades for the most part. These doodles mostly came out of a series of design posts I was following a while back; they’ve been sitting waiting for a use for a while.
As I was carving the circles I started to get excited. I still had the ghost of the ornaments flitting about in my wee brain, and I couldn’t wait to try them out! Even before I unpacked when I got home, I had to squish up some clay and test them out. Imagine my excitement to discover I had a circle cutter exactly the same size as the bottlecap I’d used for the circle sizes. Synergy!
Ugh they were even better than I had hoped. I NEEDED to work these up with some color! I put some mica on them and put them in with the made-to-order batch of snowflake ornaments I had on the table. Here they are, wet with ink:
And here’s how they turned out!!!
Not just candy, but MY candy. I did that! Conception, carving, coloring, the whole bit. They’re crazy good and I can’t WAIT to do something with them! Something new. I already have a few ideas, and I’ll be sure to share when they’re ready! I also intend to use these stamps (and probably I’ll be carving more) to make medallions out of metal clay, which I have been dying to try for a long while.
Meanwhile, check out the pretties:
