Polymer Clay Work – Crackle Shards and Crackle Pot

This week in the studio I’ve been playing with some pretty cool stuff, crackle shards and a crackle pot (amongst many other things mind you).

I always love those “what if” moments and have often talked about them.  This week was full of surprises and “what if” moments and I have to say, I think that’s why I love this medium so much…I still get excited and surprised on a regular basis.

Okay so this is how the progression has taken place.  Last week (which I blogged about) I was playing with the new Ironlak alcohol inks and trying all sorts of things with them.  I ended up using some new stencils and began painting over the stencils and then using alcohol inks on top of them.  Here’s a quick pic to remind you:

I decided to play around with the stencils and some different products.  I remembered Judy Belcher had a great “Faux Batik” in one of her  books.  Would you believe it was sitting on my table as I had just been recommending it to the members of the Aussie/New Zealand Facebook Group.  Judy uses alcohol inks to create some gorgeous batik so, inspired by her tutorial, I had a play around.  Now mine ended up quite different and quite by accident (I wasn’t originally going for a crackled look) but I went with it anyway and really loved the outcome.  I decided to create some very simple shards from the veneers and also played with a few other combinations.  So much to explore with this now.  This was my very first veneer.

I then played around with a few different colour combinations.

and these are the shards.

I had a play around with incorporating the crackled veneer with a silkscreened vener and just love the combination.  I can see more of these in my future that’s for sure.

My next challenge was to create a vessel of some sort (as suggested by Donna Greenberg).  I decided not to use these shards as they were sanded on the reverse side so made some little ones.  That’s as far as I got with the mosaic style vessel.  I played with something a little different and came up with this one:

Hmmmm wonder where my next studio day will take me??

Hope you’re all enjoying luscious studio time yourselves.

Love Deb

Debbie Crothers

I love working with polymer clay and I love to teach others my techniques for working with polymer clay. Thank you for stopping in to read my blog - I hope you have found the information valuable. Be sure to join my Newsletter to receive regular updates directly to your inbox!