June Meeting Notes

This meeting of the Central Mississippi Polymer Clay Guild met on Saturday, June 20, 2009 at 10:00 a.m. in the Community Room at Pearl Library in Pearl, Mississippi with 10 members and 6 guests.

This was a very good meeting. A lot was learned, we welcomed new people and to top it all off Joyce brought cupcakes to celebrate our anniversary. We had our first meeting last June and here we are a year later, bigger, better and still growing.

The old business portion was a discussion about the preparations for the Christmas in July class that we will be teaching in Vicksburg on Saturday, July 25, 2009 from 10:00 a.m. to Noon at the Southern Cultural Heritage Foundation (http://www.southernculture.org/) 1302 Adams Street, Vicksburg, Mississippi (directions)

Joyce showed us the boxes that she is putting together with the supplies for the two projects, the snowflake and Santa ornaments. Everybody agreed that this packaging would give a good first impression of the Guild which is, of course, what we want. We discussed whether we could get both projects done in the two hour time frame. Annette is going to see if we can get this extended to 1:00 p.m. just to make sure we're not too rushed. Jennifer will be teaching the Santa and Joyce the Snowflake. The cost for the class of $40.00 includes instruction and supplies for the two projects and is designed to be an introduction to polymer clay. The proceeds from this class will go into the “Bring an artist to Mississippi” fund.

Which provided a natural transition from old business to new. We as a guild would like to host a retreat in fall of 2010. Joyce will begin research on who is available and who we can afford. We need to be thinking about fund-raising activities related to polymer clay that can help build this fund.

Joyce advised us that Stubby Stampers in Brookhaven donated 2 books to our guild library. She told us about how this is family business and had great tools for stamping that would also work well with polymer clay! I believe there is a plan in the works for a guild meeting that focuses on using stamps with polymer clay.

At the May meeting we all worked on the logo project for our new website design. Arlene brought three options for us to review. The option you see above was voted on and approved for the website design and includes all the logos submitted except the winner, made by Debbie Rhodes, which will be used as a stand-alone logo. This logo has been put on the CMSPCG yahoo group both with the background shown here and with a white background. Members can use this logo on business cards or letterhead for the guild. The logos are saved in a .jpg format. If someone needs a different format, please contact your website editor, Arlene Harrison.


Joyce showed us the new Firemountain Gems catalog with features on the cover a peacock design by Christi Friesen. She had posted a link on the CMSPCG Yahoo site not long before the meeting about a free tutorial for this project. If you enjoyed making the turtles, al la Christi, at our January meeting, you’ll love this design. A request was made that we do the peacock as a guild project one month. Debbie will work it into the schedule and let us know when.

We had some young guests at this month’s meeting and Jennifer jumped in and entertained them nicely, got their hands into the clay. Note to members and guests: This is an ADULT group... our time to get away from family and responsibilities so please, no one under the age of 16! We don’t mean to be ugly or mean, this is in the bylaws because we do work with sharp tools. We all love our kids and grandkids, but this is “me” time.

Debbie had run across a really cool technique for making faux abalone and she shared that with us this month. It involved mixing colors with the pearl to create the basic colors, then stacking thick and thin layers in three stacks, leaving one layer to the side. She then showed us how she took some black oil paint and put a very thin layer on the top of each stack. We took a lunch break while the paint dried.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.">


After lunch the fun really began! We took the three stacks and stacked them together, then laid the layer we had left to the side on top. Next we compressed the stack to about half the size, then used our fat handled paintbrush to poke holes in the full stack. We compressed again to close up the holes then flipped it over and did the same thing from the bottom of the stack. Once everything was compressed back together with all the holes closed up, we pressed the stack down on a tile and let it rest. Under ideal circumstances we would let it rest overnight or put it in the refrigerator for an hour or so… long enough for the stack to cool and firm up. But we, of course, needed that ahhhhhhhhhhhhh! moment so Debbie sliced and we responded appropriately! This picture says it better than I can type it! Angie, one of our visitors today, was amazed by what she saw when Debbie sliced across the top of the stack!

Once everybody had their faux abalone stack made, Annette showed us how to take thin slices from that stack, apply them to scrap clay, and make a blade holder. For those of you who tried this and your blade stuck – mine did! – you might try wrapping the blade with waxed paper for your next try. I believe someone else mentioned Armor All too, so try different things until you find what works for you. We had quite a variety of blade covers plus a couple of pens! Imagination at work!

One more note on the faux abalone. If you don’t want to use the oil paint, you can roll a very, very thin sheet of black clay instead but for it to look right, it has to be VERY thin. One tip we all learned was that when rolling out clay very thinly, you can wrap your clay in plastic wrap front and back, then run it through the pasta machine sizing down step by step to the thinnest setting. If you want to go even thinner, fold a piece of card stock in half and run that through the pasta machine with the plastic wrapped clay.

As one final demo for the day, Arlene showed us a technique using alcohol inks and metallic foil which she found online. First she presses metallic foil (she used gold but any color of foil should do) on black clay, then dropped different colors of alcohol inks onto the foil. She then dabbed away part of the ink to reveal the mixed and mingled colors. The final step – once the alcohol ink was dry -- was laying a very, very thin piece of translucent clay over the entire area. She took a cookie cutter and cut a circle to make a pendant. She tells us that she hits the still-warm-from-the-oven baked pendant with a hot air gun to make the translucent clearer. Because you’ve added the thin translucent on top of the clay-foil-alcohol ink stack and baked it, you have a surface that you can sand. If you didn’t put the translucent on before you sanded, the gold foil might lift off. Joyce mentioned too that some of the foils tend to turn dark over time so keep that in mind if you are wanting to make an heirloom piece.

The next meeting will be held on Saturday, July 18 and will focus on canes. For those of you who were at the May meeting, do you have your skinner blend canes made yet? Myra is going to show us some of the techniques that she and Annette have learned and back by popular demand, Arlene will show us how she makes a flower cane. This will be a great meeting and one that clayers both beginning and experienced will enjoy. Mark your calendars now and plan to come clay with us!