valentine fun

Posted on February 5, 2013 by pattikimle — 1 Comment

I took some time to play today to make a few new textures with hearts as the theme.

This past weekend, I hosted a class in my home studio on the subject of textures and making your own texture plates in polymer.

Here’s a great technique that doesn’t require drawing or carving skills:

Bake a sheet of clay for your background. This can be Sculpey Bake & Bend, Premo, or my favorite, a 1:1:1 mix of Bake & Bend, Premo, and Ultralight. This sheet should be a medium thickness from your pasta machine, and big enough for your pattern.

After the backing sheet is cooled, spread a thin layer of Liquid Sculpey over it and press a very thin sheet of clay over that. Make the second layer a contrast color so you can see what you are doing.

Press your pattern into the top layer. The baked underlayer ensures that all the design will be consistent in depth of lines. You can remove sections also.

This pattern used the 1/4″ square, and the tiny heart from the Kemper cutters sets. And various needle tools for detailing. After the pattern is complete, bake the sheet again.

Next, make a negative of the design by rolling it against more clay. I used Bake and Bend for this sheet also.