Find the hare - Component of the month at Art Elements

The component of the month (COM) at Art Elements (AE) was made by Niky Sayers this time. It was one of her gorgeous coin claps. I love her work for years, her creations really speak to me. Especially how she uses old coins and creates something new out of them.

I have to admit there was only one problem...

It was a struggle to take images! The silver of the coin shines so brightly that it reflects the light and makes it difficult to capture the hare image. This is actually not a problem in real life but moreover a problem of not having a professional camera on my side ;)

So you will have to believe me on this!

I used some green leather scraps. It was a rather accidental choice since I am cutting leather right now for some book binding (christmas is right around the corner) and loved the green scraps too much to throw them away (it may be a massive problem to be able to use nearly anything... it may accumulate the stuff one have....).

So I cut them to thinner stripes, knotted them several times and combined them with rustic beads. The blue ones are made by Grubbi ceramics and the round ones by me. Also I just went with it. There are also some other beads hidden, a single blue dyed seed and some glass ones.

The clasp will be one the side when this necklace is worn. So the weight of the (mostly) ceramic beads will further secure the hold and it adds a wonderful accent.

Thank you so much Niky! I may finally be ready to also use the other precious pieces made by you I have hoarded until now. :)

Please have a look what everyone else made. I can't wait to see it myself!

Guest Designers

Linda Landig

Kathy Lindemer

Divya N

Art Element Team

Claire Fabian

Jenny Davies-Reazor

Cathy Spivey Mendola

Susan Kennedy

Caroline Dewison

Lesley Watt

Diana Ptaszynski

Lindsay Starr

Laney Mead

Niky Sayers

Whatever you can find - more molds and stamps for polymer clay!

When I saw all these cute and tiny paper clips in south korea, I couldn't resist! As they are all made out of metal I already had some use with polymer clay in mind. But now I thought why not to make some kind of stamps / molds out of them? And here we go...

Something from the lab: A PCR reaction plate (this was already unsteril and before we throw it away I finally realized the great little letters!).

Just to give you an idea how tiny the letters and numbers are. 

This is a closure I found in my local fabric and sewing shop... had to come with me! They also have great bronze metal rings I am using for jewelery normally meant for belts. Really always worth to have a look in stores for other crafting areas ^^

I wanted to make some molds with metal charms I had lying around. I clipped the pin hole off to get a better mold. 

Now to the resulting stamps and molds: Sooooo cute these tiny wee animals!

Some stamps made just with some details of the paper clips...

Just roughly handles ^^

My new letter and number stamps. I have now the numbers 1 to 12 and the letters A to H. Not perfect but enough to play with it! I put small polymer clay balls on top of the plate and baked it all together (the PCR plate can tolerate the heat). Afterwards I glued this strange wood pieces I found in my stash on the baked clay with E6000. 

Perfect impressions!

Molds made with polymer clay is stiff and for other uses (at least for me) compared with silicone molds. With a polymer clay mold like this you can get perfect details. 

I also write on the backside what kind of mold it is and of course mark the top!

The I used some old scraps of polymer clay (fimo classic) to test the imprints / molds :)

Love the little colibri and squirrel! I can see nice pendants and textures made with them :)

In small they are also cute... and such tiny letters and numbers... find he bananas?

The molds are nicely working and I always have use for leaves and more leaves!

...and a lot of tiny cute animals!

Rather more for my beads and pendants... will look great after baking and painting.

Even while I love fimo classic to work with, I definitely would suggest now suer sculpey firm for making small molds and stamps. The fimo classic is not attaching too much to a baked super sculpey mold (that is not the case if I want to use fimo classic in a mold made with fimo classic!). Yes, of course I also use a little bit of water or baby powder as a release agent but I prefer if I already don't have to use a lot to start with ^^Also as I already wrote quite often in my blog: Super sculpey firm hold small details stunningly great and beautiful! 

My vintage eastern critter - playing with the rabbit

This is the leftover of a rabbit I cut out of an old book page. It was just per accident that I laid it on my "try-it-all" book cover. Doens't it look great? I took a picture and again: I played with all the photo editing features of picasa. Oh.... and no... I can't decide which one would be my favorite! I love them all! A little bit to late for eastern this year... but next year I will print some of the pictures in a high quality to make some cards out of them!