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travel, and experiments with polymer clay
the paramour just left, after the first flight was cancelled. the fog was sitting pretty low here, but it must have been vancouver that had the real problem, since the later flight just took off in worse fog. anyway, that one has landed in vancouver, and i am hoping that 1 hour and 10 min is enough time to get through immigration and customs, so that zie'll catch the connecting flight to LAX.
and of course, to be properly ironic, i had for once made plans for today. ha! i keep telling people that not making plans is much better because one is rarely disappointed. :) it wasn't anything big, just that i had charted out a series of experiments in my mind.
see, when i got into polymer clay i really enjoyed most of it, except for the baking. the baking is annoying as all get-out because our oven not only doesn't heat to the temperatures indicated on the dial, no, it also produces weird spikes. and polymer clay does have a narrow range within which it will bake solidly, yet not discolour or worse, burn. so, i bought a toaster oven at the salvation army store. but that didn't work out because the heating element is too close to the pieces that need to be baked, unless they're fairly small. *grump*. early on i saw the warnings on the packages about NOT EVER microwaving it, so naturally, i had to try that -- and those warnings seemed quite correct. a mere couple of minutes in the microwave produce a crisply burned polymer clay piece and very noxious fumes.
that put a serious dent in my experiments with polymer clay, and i put it mostly away and did other things. but yesterday when thinking about artsy things to make for people who commented on the meme a few days ago, i thought "hey! so it burns when put directly into the microwave. but what if i were to immerse it in water? in a container that does not conduct lots of heat?"
so that's what's in the microwave right now, some scrap clay (which is an amalgam of super sculpey and leftover bits of premo). i watched the first cooking (15 min) very closely, and nothing terrible happened. some slight fumes are emitted (the window behind the microwave vent is open), but no worse than what emanates from the oven when baking the clay. and it did bake, all the way through the beads, though not quite as hard as i would want it to be (fingernails leave an impression). so i'm cooking the batch again, for 20 min this time.
and of course, to be properly ironic, i had for once made plans for today. ha! i keep telling people that not making plans is much better because one is rarely disappointed. :) it wasn't anything big, just that i had charted out a series of experiments in my mind.
see, when i got into polymer clay i really enjoyed most of it, except for the baking. the baking is annoying as all get-out because our oven not only doesn't heat to the temperatures indicated on the dial, no, it also produces weird spikes. and polymer clay does have a narrow range within which it will bake solidly, yet not discolour or worse, burn. so, i bought a toaster oven at the salvation army store. but that didn't work out because the heating element is too close to the pieces that need to be baked, unless they're fairly small. *grump*. early on i saw the warnings on the packages about NOT EVER microwaving it, so naturally, i had to try that -- and those warnings seemed quite correct. a mere couple of minutes in the microwave produce a crisply burned polymer clay piece and very noxious fumes.
that put a serious dent in my experiments with polymer clay, and i put it mostly away and did other things. but yesterday when thinking about artsy things to make for people who commented on the meme a few days ago, i thought "hey! so it burns when put directly into the microwave. but what if i were to immerse it in water? in a container that does not conduct lots of heat?"
so that's what's in the microwave right now, some scrap clay (which is an amalgam of super sculpey and leftover bits of premo). i watched the first cooking (15 min) very closely, and nothing terrible happened. some slight fumes are emitted (the window behind the microwave vent is open), but no worse than what emanates from the oven when baking the clay. and it did bake, all the way through the beads, though not quite as hard as i would want it to be (fingernails leave an impression). so i'm cooking the batch again, for 20 min this time.
Re: Geek Answer Syndrome. :)
the microwave+water experiment did work out pretty well for my first batch, which was super sculpey with scrap clay (there musta been some elasticlay among it because it remained just a little soft -- fingernail makes a lasting impression). the second batch with fimo classic is harder, but "bloomed" some -- has a white coating on the outside, which comes off pretty easily with some rubbing. neither batch cracked when i threw them repeatedly with some effort against concrete. tomorrow i'll try sculpey III, premo, kato and all the translucents. i bet the latter will plaque.
Re: Geek Answer Syndrome. :)
Re: Geek Answer Syndrome. :)
or, use a different clay. i buy them at sales since i am not doing mass-production, and michaels usually has those weird sales where each 2oz pack costs C$1.50, no matter what the original price, so i can buy the much more expensive fimo and premo at more than 50% off. if i mass produced things i'd buy the 1 lb loafs of the good clays online instead. that probably comes out cheaper than buying the small packs of sculpey III.
oh, and i mix clays for different projects, so i get a material that's got the consistency that's best for it. they can all be mixed, the polymer clays. i mean, smushed together, not one part made from one clay and another from a different one; that doesn't work well. so you could use sculpey III and cut it with fimo classic, which would make a clay that can be molded pretty darn well.
what's a trilobyte bead look like, got a picture anywhere?