Happy: Digging for buried treasure

by Patty Lakinsmith

This might be of interest to those of you who work with clay, whether metal, polymer or ceramic.  I'm exploring some new organic shapes to complement some of my floral-styled disc beads, and made these in Precious Metal Clay (fine silver) the other day.  Here they are after patina and tumbling overnight. I swear, opening the tumbler and picking out the goodies is almost as fun as digging for potatoes.

These are destined for some very special pieces.

I used some new tools from Green Girl Studios for some of the texture with these, and it's working wonderfully for me.  Here's the swirly tool:

The possibilities with this tool for any kind of clay are endless, and I found that the shape worked very well for my organic forms.  There's also some great detail on the bottom end of the tool.  There are several variants of these available on the Green Girl Studios site, but I got mine in person from Andrew when they were at the Best Bead Show.

I also used some dried poppy seed pods for texture - see this image (courtesy of Auntie P on Flickr).  Look at that pattern!  Wonderful stuff!

Anyway, not much from me here today, but thought you might like to know about this wonderful tool.

Studio Solutions

by D'Arsie Manzella

Good Morning!

Patty's post got me thinking of studio solutions. Her gorgeous glass case is a marvel of beauty and function born of necessity. Many of us have created just the right tool or studio accessory to make our creative lives unique. Often those hidden gems go unnoticed, today I would like to share one of mine!

I often use letter stamps to make impressions in the clay that I use to sculpt my original designs. These letter stamps are tiny, rubber and generally unruly. Especially if the box of them gets shaken or stirred and heaven forbid- dropped!

In the search to keep my little stamps safe and sound, I was inspired by what generally surrounds them... Beads! I would "string" them on some wire, in alphabetical order and they would be by the ready and beautifully contained in a tiny bracelet configuration.

In order to do this, I used a very tiny hole punch to get a hole in each part of the non-usable black side of the stamp. Once they were on I connected the wire ends and voila!



My favorite part about this solution is that each letter can be twisted so that the one I am using to stamp with is separated from the rest.

What solutions have you created? Please share your favorite idea!