skygrazer.com

I still love these little guys and will probably always make at least an ocassional dragon-type creature. Actually my very first website on GeoCities was called the Draggle’s Lair. It’s a little embarrassing to look back at it now but I was really proud of it at the time

Dimensions: Height=2-3″
Draggles are small elusive creatures often mistaken for dragons in poor light. They thrive on chocolate chip cookies and orange peel. One of their interesting habits is to collect small objects such as pen caps and paper clips which they save for a rainy day in any convenient spot. If you find such a collection, for instance under a couch cushion, you can assume that one of these wonderful creatures is living in the vicinity. Be sure to leave out a chocolate chip cookie every now and then and always cover your polymer clay… Or you may have to smooth out a few claw prints from late night Draggle dancing.

Here’s another blog you might want to check out. Many Parts is from artist Grant Diffendaffer. I’ve taken a couple of workshops with him and really got alot out of them. His work is stunning and really original – I managed to buy one of his vases when he was selling them on ebay and it’s absolutely gorgeous.

He’s got a new book out that I need to order – the link to the blog above points to a post about it.

This is another piece from quite a few years ago.

Dimensions: Height=3″
This votive candle holder has two image tranfers on it. The images were photocopies, colored in with colored pencils. (It’s always a good idea to make colors darker than you actually want them since not all of the color transfers.) I tinted some translucent clay with a little bit of white and blue and made a thin Skinner blend between the two colors. I rolled out a thin sheet, laid the images on it, and pressed them down well. After an hour or so, I took the paper off.

I then carefully cut out the image transfers and laid them on the votive. I used pieces from the same sheet to patch around the transfers. Then I carefully painted a thin layer of TLS (Translucent Liquid Sculpey) over the votive. When the votive is baked, the TLS protects the transfers from being rubbed off. I could have used Future after it was baked, instead, but I didn’t want a gloss on this piece.

To start the old work series, here’s a piece from quite a number of years ago that I still really like, but probably won’t fit in with the more focused theme of the new site.

Dimensions: Height=3″
This bowl was made for a “Polymer Clay Central” contest with the theme of Fire. It is a light bulb vessel, which means that the clay was formed over a lightbulb, baked and then the glass was broken out, leaving only the clay shell.

I started out by making a Skinner blend of black to gold to copper to black. I used the Premo metallics to get the full effect of the mica particles. I took slices of the blended clay and distorted and shaped them to make them look like flames. I laid these onto the black clay background layer on the lightbulb and used a brayer to smooth it. I shaped the top edge of the vessel to make it look like the tops of flames.

Once it was baked, I wet sanded the bowl from 320 grit until 2000 until it was very very smooth. (I also managed to sand my thumbnail almost all of the way through before I noticed it – OUCH!) I then buffed the bowl using my bench grinder to give it a high shine. At this point I broke out the lightbulb by carefully squeezing and tapping the bowl inside of a bag. I cleaned out the last few bits of glass with a dental tool and rinsed it out. Then I gave it a few coats of Future floor wax and put the bowl back in the oven for about 10 minutes to set the finish.

Everything’s been a little crazy lately so I haven’t been posting as much. Hopefully things will calm down a bit after the new year. Anyway, here’s a relief sculpt I made based on my existing image logo on the site… I’m playing with some site redesign ideas and will probably use this as my new logo/home page image.

I did this six inch relief a few months ago. It’s a flying squirrel although not everyone recognizes it as one without the arm membranes and feathery tail showing. I used Genesis paints to bring out the detail and subtle variations in color. I don’t usually use paint this much but I like how it came out.

I didn’t really know what a flying squirrel really looked like either until we had them living in our attic. One day we were up in the studio and we heard the feet running back and forth over the ceiling. “Oh no! What’s that?” It sounded too big to be mice so we were fearing the worst. My brother was actually visiting at the time and volunteered to go up and check it out. He caught a quick glimpse of one of them, “Well, it’s not a rat but I’m not sure what it is.” Some more scrambling noises came from above as he chased it around. “I think you have flying squirrels,” he reported. But there was no way he was going to catch those quick, agile critters by hand.

We called the town Animal Control officer to see if they had a Have a Heart trap or any suggestions. They sent someone out who nervously declined to climb into the attic to look at our vicious squirrels, but he did leave a trap off which was big enough to catch a raccoon. We went out and bought our own.

We knew we had a couple squirrels at least but we ended up catching four of them one by one in the trap baited with peanut butter and sunflower seeds. They are the cutest things with their enormous eyes, like something out of the rainforest. They were so scared when we caught them but happy to be released. The fifth squirrel refused to go into the trap. It actually climbed down through the walls of the house until it got to the basement. It was so tired and worn out at that point that my husband caught it with work gloves and just carried it outside. Once it got outside, it simply glided from his waist height hands, landing about 25 feet away.