Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Mokume Gane and Belated Easter Eggs

I had a go at Mokume Gane again the other day. I often see things I love made with the Mokume Gane technique and I have read several tutorials but never come up with anything that has made me go 'Wow!'. I think next time I shall take a tutorial to the work bench with me and try and follow it more directly and use the same colours too.

I used Fimo (trying to use up  my stash) in white, gold, and translucent and also used a
sheet of gold foil, first time I have used metal foils. I made a stack of the different colours and then rolled them through the pasta machine and cut in half a restacked and then cut in half and restacked again so I had 12 layers of clay. I used my sculpting tools to impress balls and circles of different sizes and made needle tool dot patterns and filled in some of the larger patterns with small balls of gold clay.

I then took slices with a tissue blade and laid them on a sheet of white clay. I did try shaving slices with an old potato peeler (a tip I read on someones blog - can't remember who sorry) but  it was too blunt - I will have to get a new one to try it. It worked out OK, it's quite interesting but again no wow factor for me - but then I don't really like gold so not sure what I was thinking there!

I hadn't really planned anything with it so I covered a spoon, you may have realised that's one of my default activities by now ;) What should I do with the rest? I cut out a few pendants but didn't like the shapes, I must spend some time making myself some cardboard pendant templates instead of randomly cutting things that are uneven or unbalanced or too wide...

I decided to cover an egg for my lovely husband for Easter (this was the Thursday before - I like a tight deadline!).  I blew a real egg - phew had forgotten what hard work that was having not done it since I was a teenager! I thoroughly washed the egg and then dried it in the oven for a good long time.

A sheet of mokume gane and a covered but not smoothed egg
I read several tutorials on covering eggs and tried a few with some scrap clay, but I kept getting bits that were much thicker and ruined the shape of the egg.  In the end because the pattern of the Mokume Gane was random and could take overlapping without ruining it I just wrapped a piece round most of the egg and tore bits off to fill the gaps left.

I just rolled it around in my hands to smooth it

I was quite pleased with it at this stage and made a matching stand and put it in the oven to bake.  Excellent, Easter sorted for my husband at least.

Well that was until I got it out of the oven - the one thing I forgot, probably the most important thing, the thing that I was conscious of trying to remember until the last minute - the air hole! The result...

Egg with warts!




Without the air hole as the air in the egg expanded in the heat of the oven it had nowhere to go - it expressed itself in a series of 'warts'. The stand was also too big. No time to do anything else so I gave it to him anyway, he was kind of grateful I had made the effort I think. I love the feel of it though it is so light. It would be awesome if I could sand it smooth and buff it to a shine. I will have a go again sometime, another thing to add to my polymer to try list!

Anyway I hope you all had a great Easter. We had a lovely time at my in laws

6 comments:

  1. Oh, I hate when the bubbles happen! Still pretty, though :) I use plastic eggs - I'm way too lazy to prep real ones!

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  2. Thanks. Having melted a few pens didn't want to risk the plastic ones. Having said that I decided I would always trial bake new pens/etc before covering to be sure I wasn't wasting my efforts.

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  3. Having melted several pens recently when I couldn't find my old reliable brand, I feel your pain!!! I tried several different "stick" type brands but finally found some of my old reliable BIC stick pens at WalMart and bought all they had! They look different now - kind of a smoky gray plastic - but they still work the best of any that I've tried.

    On your egg - I'm with DivaDea about not fooling with the real eggs! Way too much trouble. But you also have to be careful about which plastic eggs you use too. Some of them melt and it's really NOT pretty!!! It looks like you may have had some air pockets on the egg. Did you cover it first with white glue to give it more tooth? That's what I do with the plastic ones because of the smooth surface. Covering that round shape is a challenge. I found a star shaped cookie cutter that was just the right size for two of them to cover the plastic egg I was using. I cut two stars then put them on either end of the egg so that the tips of the star came in-between the tips of the othe star - does that make any sense?

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  4. Arlene no I didn't cover it with glue, I would say the natural egg shell had enough tooth. The issue was that i didn't pierce the polymer clay covering. I realised that as soon as I saw it out of the oven. It was so annoying cause I was saying to myself the whole time I was making it - mustn't forget to pierce it and then did! Hmm stars good idea, uyes I can picture the points meeting up - off to check my cookie cutter box to see if I have anything that might be the right size. Thanks for your comments Cara

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  5. Love your Mokume Gane. I want to try covering an egg - have noted your experience. Left it too late for Easter but I have all year to practice for next Easter.

    I now have a photo of my trial at covering pebbles - blog post 28 March 2010

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  6. LOL - Warts! When I tried that the first time, all the air pushed out in one spot. No warts, but it was a pregnant egg!

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