Lessons I Learned While Working With Polymer Clay #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi and welcome to the letter L post in my #AtoZChallenge on creative self-discovery and self-expression. Today, I want to talk about things I learned along the way during my creative process. I am going to limit myself to polymer clay this time, as there’s so much I’ve learned.

My very first polymer clay creation was done after a blog post I’d found, but the blogger wasn’t specifically focused on polymer clay or even crafting in general. Maybe because of that, her skill level was quite basic. This was good for me, as I could easily follow the steps to creating my first project. It was a flower that I’d rolled out using a wooden rolling pin, cut out using a cookie cutter and then stuck a blob of clay onto as its center. I stuck a thick crochet needle through it to make a hole. When it was baked, I colored around the edges of the center with a sharpie.

There are so many things I did wrong with that one. First, I used a wooden rolling pin. I quite quickly found out that wood absorbs some components of polymer clay and, for this reason, wooden tools shouldn’t be used. I should have used an acrylic roller. Or, better yet, a pasta machine. Honestly, even though I do still have an acrylic roller, I hardly ever use it for rolling out sheets of clay now.

Then, the blob of clay. My flower center was raised and I had no way of preventing that at the time. Now, I can roll out my clay on a thin setting on my pasta machine, then cut out the desired shape for the center and put it onto the flower and, if I want to, give it a roll with my acrylic roller. To be honest, I haven’t tested that process recently.

Then, the hole. I eventually decided to buy bead piercing pins to be able to pierce thinner holes into polymer clay pieces that needed holes. Getting the holes in without distortion was quite the learning curve and I still honestly cannot do it myself. I can instruct my staff, but they have to do the actual twisting of the bead piercing pin.

Finally, the sharpie. Sharpie ink reacts with polymer clay or so I’ve heard. My piece is fine so far (I still have it because it was my first creation), but I did eventually decide not to use sharpies on polymer clay anymore.

After this one project came many more failed projects from which I learned one or more lessons. For example, I at one point used cheap glitter glue to cover my baked polymer clay piece. Well, that wouldn’t stick. Instead, I now add glitter to the raw clay just before baking my piece. Please note that you cannot run polymer clay that you’ve added glitter or mica or anything to through your pasta machine. At best, it will create a mess and at worst, it will ruin your pasta machine.

Finally, of course, I’m currently learning about colors and color mixing. Just yesterday, I downloaded a book off Bookshare about color mixing specifically for polymer clay artists. I think I’ll love it!

Jewelry-Making #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Welcome to my letter J post in the #AtoZChallenge. Today, I want to share about one of my crafty hobbies once again, because I thought it’d be an interesting distraction from the more philosophical musings. Besides, I just didn’t have another topic for this letter, ha.

I made my first pieces of jewelry back in the psych hospital in like 2014 or 2015. Back then, I bought quite expensive beads, such as gemstone beads, even though I could only make basic necklaces and bracelets. That is, I did make one necklace with three different wires, but I needed a lot of help with it.

Then, after a while, I stopped making jewelry, because I just needed too much help with it and couldn’t really produce the quality I liked. I restarted about a year ago. This time, the first beads I bought, were simple acrylic beads that weren’t too expensive or precious. I did try to go for shapes I liked, such as butterflies. I also at one point bought a collection of 90 silver-colored, plastic charms for €5,95.

For my birthday last year, I got a surprise package of jewelry-making supplies from a store local to my parents. In this package were a lot of glass beads, which I loved. Thus came back my love of creating glass and actual metal jewelry.

Because most of my glass beads are irregularly shaped, I at first struggled to get each side of the necklace, with the charm or pendant in the middle, equally long. To solve this, I got myself a beading board to be able to count out the length of each side of the necklace. My best glass beaded necklace is one I created about two months ago using this board as a guide.

I also like to make my own beads and jewelry out of polymer clay. I created one pair of earrings back in the early days of my polymer clay journey, but glued the earring posts to the polymer clay using generic jewelry glue. Now some people do use E6000, but even that’s generally recommended against for polymer clay. The best way to attach polymer clay earrings to their posts is to cover the posts in an additional layer of polymer clay. If you want or need to use glue anyway, choose a brand of superglue gel, such as Gorilla or Loctite. I had my staff glue the below brooch to its pin using Gorilla superglue.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (April 10, 2022)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone! I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare today. I just had a soft drink and a glass of water, but if you’d like a cup of coffee or tea, I’m pretty sure my staff can make you one too. Let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that a fellow client passed away on Wednesday. He had had COVID back in February, like most of us, but he didn’t fully recover. This client had been hospitalized several times during December and January because of seizures, but these finally seemed to be well under control. Unfortunately, COVID was the last straw. He had been on a feeding pump ever since he’d had COVID, but because he became increasingly uncomfortable and unresponsive, the doctor and staff decided to discontinue his feedings on Monday. I last saw him alive Monday evening. He actually lifted up his body, smiled and squealed with delight upon hearing my voice. I made the conscious decision, having already been informed that he’d be dying soon, to keep this memory as my last memory of him while alive.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I finally managed to craft another butterfly with the silicone mold I’d gotten for Christmas last December. I badly wanted to create a butterfly to go with the fellow client’s coffin, but wasn’t sure whether I could use the mold. However, other tutorials seemed even more complicated, so I eventually decided to give it a try. I did the wings in Fimo Effect color blue ice quartz. The body is pacific blue and the antennae are black.

If we were having coffee, I would also tell you that I have finally given in to the polymer clay color mixing thing and bought a precision kitchen scale. That plus a collection of 60 Fimo soft color recipes. Of course, I haven’t tried Fimo professional yet, but if I have to believe my staff, the colors I’ve mixed so far turn out gorgeous despite not being done with the true primary colors.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you about the nationwide cerebral palsy day I went to yesterday. Of course, because the ParaTransit taxi had arrived at 8AM and we didn’t have to pick up any other passengers along the way, I was in Apeldoorn, where the day would be held, by 9AM. Thankfully, I had called my mother-in-law when I entered the taxi and she’d made sure to be there on time too.

The day started with a live-streamed lecture by Erik Scherder, a neuroscientist from Amsterdam. The message was quite similar to the one he’d conveyed in 2018 when I’d attended the cerebral palsy day too: that exerting yourself physically is needed to stimulate your overall neurological wellbeing. In 2018, the lecture had mostly been geared towards (young) adults, while yesterday it was more focused on children and their parents.

I attended two workshops during the day. One was on aging with cerebral palsy, mostly geared towards those age 40+, so I was a little outside of the scope, but I could relate (sad as it may be) to some of the increasing discomfort that older adults with CP face. The other was a yoga class.

As regular readers of my blog might know, I am not 100% sure I even have cerebral palsy, in that my parents never told me and, by the time I was an adult, things got so overshadowed with other diagnoses it’s unclear. For this reason, I felt validated knowing that I appeared not to be the most mildly affected person, strange as this may seem. In fact, during the yoga class, we had to loosen up our muscles and my mother-in-law told me to loosen up. Someone else half-joked: “That’s about the hardest thing to tell a spastic.” That made me feel good.

How have you been?

Color Mixing Recipes!

Posted on by Astrid

One of Mama Kat’s writing prompts this week asks us to write about something we collect or used to collect. Another asks us to write about something we’ve been working on this week. Yet another asks us to make one superficial wish. I am going to combine all of these and talk about color mixing recipes for polymer clay.

As regular readers of my blog will know, I am totally blind, but I did have a bit of useable vision growing up. As a result, I do still have a concept of color due to my memory of sight and also due to my synesthesia (in my case, ability to see Braille letters in color when I touch them).

As regular readers also know, my main creative hobby recently, besides blogging, is polymer clay. I love the fact that polymer clay comes in so many varieties of colors and that you can also color it with alcohol inks (which I’ve never used so far), soft pastels, acrylic paint, etc.

However, a few months ago, I discovered color mixing recipes. The vendor I impulsively bought a small collection of five recipes from, builds its recipes on four basic colors of Fimo soft: white, sunflower yellow, Indian red and brilliant blue. I immediately bought all four colors, but didn’t yet have a precision kitchen scale to be able to weigh out 0.25g, for example.

This past Sunday, I bought such a scale and also bought another collection, this time of 60 color recipes. Even though I can’t yet say I actually collect polymer clay color recipes, I would really like to.

That brings me to my superficial wish: an endless supply of free Fimo color recipes. There is an app that provides color recipes based on the colors in photos, but it’s available only on Android. Besides, one of my staff tried it yesterday and it constantly crashed. It also uses Fimo professional. Now I don’t mind that, since the advantage of Fimo professional is it actually comes in the true primary colors, such as true yellow, true magenta, etc. I would really love to be able to try to mix those colors too, as I’ve heard mixing actual true primaries creates more vivid colors than mixing fake primaries such as sunflower yellow and Indian red.

By the way, here is a blob of polymer clay in the first color I created using my new collection of color mixing recipes and my precision scale: moss green.

Of coursse, since I didn’t create anything with this color yet, it looks a bit weird, but I’ll be using it in a fall-inspired craft project I have in mind.

Since then, I’ve created two more colors, both for the fall-inspired project too: camel and burnt sienna. I have also been oohing and aahing at a ton of color recipes I would like to buy someday still. But they’re better if they don’t cost me money. So, if Mama Kat’s friendly genie would please pop by me and grant me that endless supply of free Fimo color mixing recipes, I could create all the colors I want.

Mama’s Losin’ It

#WeekendCoffeeShare (April 2, 2022)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone on this cold Saturday evening. I am joining #WeekendCoffeeShare today. I’m afraid I just have water or maybe the staff has put some soft drinks in the fridge by now. My favorite soft drink, Dubbelfrisss, wasn’t cold when I had my evening drink about an hour ago. Anyway, let’s have a chat.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that I finally have been crafting again today after a week of just watching crafty videos and doing nothing creative at all. That is, I’ve been blogging, which counts too, of course, but I haven’t touched my polymer clay or jewelry-making supplies or macrame cords or anything.

Today, I finally did a couple of pieces for the mobile for the baby my sister is expecting. I also finished the polymer clay hedgehog I’d started on about a month ago. At first, I was disappointed, because I’d used up all of a particular color for its body and now it was nowhere to be found, so I couldn’t do the ears in the same color. Turns out real hedgehogs also have slightly differently colored ears than their bodies. Besides, I never really meant to be doing a fully realistic sculpture anyway (I can’t).

If we were having coffee, I’d share that the rest of the week was quite meh. I’ve been having tons of plans in my head, but no ability to actually put them into action. Today, I also experienced a ton of flashbacks and internal chaos. Seriously, the discrepancy between my intellectual ability and my emotional immaturity is really getting at me. I find that I can intellectually think of a lot of things that emotionally I cannot handle at all. I’m not sure if this makes sense.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that I may want to research an autism support method by Colette de Bruin. My assigned home support staff pointed it out to me and said she’s pretty much using the method on me already, but I may benefit from learning about it myself.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I am very happy with the latest iOS update. I finally was able to do some reading again on my iPhone yesterday, since the update fixed a bug that caused my Braille display to become pretty unresponsive. I usually read with just my Braille display, as I don’t like VoiceOver’s synthetic speech for that.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d tell you that I have a quiet weekend, because my husband isn’t coming over and I have no other plans. Next week though is going to be busy, especially the weekend. I am going to the nationwide cerebral palsy day with my mother-in-law. I will be attending a workshop on aging with CP in the morning, which I am really looking forward to. In the afternoon, I’ll be attending a yoga class. I may not be able to write a coffee share post then, especially since I’m also supposed to stay up-to-date with the #AtoZChallenge. I’ll be certain to write about it though.

How have you been?

A Sunday With the Theme of Self-Esteem

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all. The past 24 hours have truly been a mixed bag of emotions. I started obsessing over wanting to start another new craft. Yes, another! Somehow, I decided on macrame and got all obsessed about learning its techniques before even having any cords. Then I decided to ask in a Facebook group whether you need to be coordinated in both hands in order to be able to do macrame. The first commenter basically said not only that, but you also most likely won’t be able to feel your way around the knots.

This was late last night, past midnight actually. I went to bed feeling awful about myself. After all, the reason I wanted a new craft is not that there’s nothing more to learn about polymer clay, but that I’m somehow convinced that I’ve reached my full potential.

By morning, I found that other people had been more encouraging of me trying macrame or even card making. You know, remember I’d said I tried that back in 2013? These people said so what if my work doesn’t look good, if I enjoyed the craft. That’s not entirely my kind of attitude, since I do want to be able to share what I make here or on my personal Facebook page at least without feeling like I have to be ashamed of myself.

I have been trying to work on some polymer clay projects in progress again later today by sanding some beads and charms. It felt kind of okay. I also watched some more YouTube videos on polymer clay, but they made me feel like I’ll be taking forever to understand the concepts. Then again, this is even more the case if I start another craft entirely. Guess I’ll just stick with polymer clay and try to be more patient with myself.

As a side note, one person did say that, if I can tie my shoelaces, I can do macrame. That kind of discouraged me at first, since I can’t tie my shoes. Make that couldn’t. At least, after three tries, I was successful at tying my shoelaces while my shoes were in front of me on the table. Then I tried several more times, more or less successfully. I don’t think I want to really be able to tie my own shoes, but it was an interesting boost to my self-confidence.

#AtoZChallenge 2022 Theme Reveal

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Can you believe it’s March already and we’re fast approaching the April A to Z Challenge? I certainly can’t! I’ve been participating, or at least trying to, every year since 2015. It was a success in 2015 and 2016, back on my old blog, and in 2020 and last year on here. IN 2019, the letter X caused me to quit. Now, I have at least two optional words for the letter X for this year. They’re both a bit lame, but that’s okay. Oh wait, I haven’t revealed my theme yet.

To be honest, I’m still not 100% decided on a clear theme and, unlike some of the more organized participants (which I’m pretty sure is 99% of the participants), I haven’t even thought of words for most of my letters. That being said, I feel that no theme tends not to work for me. I did that in 2018 and 2019 and both times weren’t successful. So, I’ve decided that I’m going with a broad enough theme that I can still veer off the path a little when I want to. If I later decide on a narrower theme, like last year, that’s okay. Back then, I had the theme of natural health and ended up writing about aromatherapy only.

Anyway, my theme for the 2022 A to Z Challenge is creative self-care and self-expression. I originally wanted it to just be crafts, or just polymer clay, but that way I may get too specific for my own liking at times. I am hoping to share some of my crafts, maybe even older projects that I did in mediums other than the ones I use now (card making, eek!). Let’s hope the challenge will be a success!

#AtoZChallenge 2022 Theme Reveal

Crafting Unicorns!

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I came up with today’s prompt for #JusJoJan and it’s “Unicorn”.

I love love love unicorns! I have two unicorn soft toys. One, I got when I left the first day center with my current care agency back in early August of 2018. The other, I got in my Christmas hamper at the next day center that year.

Other than soft toys, I also have a number of unicorns I crafted out of polymer clay. Today, I am going to show you a few of my recent creations.

First up is a white unicorn charm. It is mostly two-dimensional, which I don’t really like, because it means its horn sticks out up rather than forward. It has a rose on top of its head. That one took me about half an hour to craft, because my Fimo Soft polymer clay was just a little too soft for my liking. For the rose, I used the color Cherry Red and I used Tropical Green for the leaves. The horn is done using Metallic Gold Fimo Effect.

The next unicorn I’m going to show you is my favorite so far. It was done using Pastel Lilac Fimo Effect. I did the mane and tail in Metallic Gold and Metallic Silver and used Metallic Gold for its horn. I added some purple glitters to its legs and ears for some extra sparkle.

Then last Thursday, I tried to create the perfect unicorn. I originally wanted to create the same unicorn as above but put it onto a green, flower-shaped slab. Eventually, I ended up choosing a different color, Fimo Soft Lavender, for this unicorn’s body. I did create the mane and tail using Metallic Silver and Metallic Gold again. Again, I added glitters, gold this time, though just to its legs.

Unfortunately, I forgot to blend the unicorn’s horn into the head and/or secure it with liquid clay. Rather, I secured it using wire only. This means the horn is a bit loose, which I’m told isn’t really visible but it does bother me. This is the reason I don’t think this is my best unicorn so far.

What do you think of these? Do you like unicorns?

Artistic As Always #WotW

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone this Christmas Eve. How are you all doing? I’m doing pretty well. I’m joining Word of the Week again with a phrase (as almost always) and (again as almost always) my phrase of the week is related to my creative endeavors. I’m trying to come up with original phrases to say I’ve been crafting and creating a lot again. Today my phrase of the week is: Artistic As Always.

Truly, I don’t think a single day went by that I didn’t do any creative activity. I mean, I haven’t been blogging as often as I’d like to, but I did a lot of polymer clay work. I created several charms, including a planet, a flower and a rainbow, which is currently in the oven.

I also created my first polymer clay cane. A cane is a log of clay with a design on the inside, which you can then cut into slices to use as beads or to decorate a vase or whatever. I decided to do a flower cane and to make the slices into beads.

I will combine them, some yellow beads I made today that are also in the oven and a flower charm I made last week into a necklace for a woman who lives in the care home downstairs from mine, who is obsessed with necklaces. I still need to create lots of yellow beads, but the woman won’t have her birthday till the end of January.

I also got some crafty supplies in my Christmas hamper from the day center. They are two silicone molds. When I saw them, I did worry they’re a bit too shallow and detailed to use with polymer clay, as they’re officially for chocolate I think. I created a butterfly with one of the molds, which is now in the oven too.

I do worry that the butterfly will be some kind of omen though. You see, a fellow client went into hospital with recurring seizures yesterday and I’m worried sick that he’ll die. Please all pray that he’ll recover.

In addition to creating art itself, I’ve also been busy exploring the artistic community online. I joined several Facebook groups for neurodivergent creators and artists. For those not aware, the term “neurodivergent” refers to people with a neurological or mental health condition, such as autism, ADHD, bipolar disorder, etc. I initially worried the term “artist” or even “creative” was meant to include those creating visual artworks such as paintings or drawings only. Thankfully, I quickly found out the groups I am part of are inclusive of all creative outlets.

Lastly, inspired by a conversation in one of the FB groups, I decided to buy the books The Artist’s Way and The Artist’s Way Workbook. I haven’t yet been able to do anything in them, because I read books on my iPhone and using my Braille display only and, since the latest iOS update, these don’t work well together. That is, several times a day, seemingly at random, my Braille display will get stuck and the only way to get it unstuck is to reboot my iPhone. Not ideal when in the middle of a sentence in a book.

Overall, I’ve been really artistic over the past week. It’s been an intense week on other fronts too, but I may share more about that in a separate post.

Word of the Week linky

Christmas Crafting!

Posted on by Astrid

I have a confession to make: this is my first year ever actually doing Christmas decorations. I used to like them as a child. Particularly though, I liked fidgeting with the little wooden snowmen and angels and Santas in the Christmas tree.

When I left my parental home to go into independence training, it never occurred to me to decorate for the holidays. Besides, I was back with my parents over Christmas. I never celebrated Christmas in my independent living student accommodation and once in the mental hospital, I hated decorations with a passion. During my first year there, I even ripped them all off. I don’t think my husband cared much for decorations during the years I lived with him either. Then when I went into the care facility, for the first two years, apparently I wasn’t feeling stable enough to decorate my room. In fact, I never quite considered it “my room”. Now I sort of do. I consider that a major win, since it means I’m beginning to feel safe in the care facility. Maybe the fact that I started decorating for Christmas, has some symbolic meaning.

I don’t have a lot of decorations. I have a store-bought, simple, ready-made Christmas tree and a couple of smaller decorations here and there. The point is I have something though.

In addition, this is probably the first year I’ve genuinely crafted something for Christmas too. I mean, during the year I did card making (around eight to nine years ago), I did create Christmas cards too, but these were so ugly a five-year-old could have made them. This year, I actually added my very own home-crafted piece to my Christmas decor.

First, several weeks ago, I created a cookie cutter polymer clay Christmas tree charm. I fully intended on finishing it off with gold Fimo Liquid after adding the balls, but decided after it got out of the oven that I didn’t really like the way it turned out after all. I don’t have a picture for this reason.

Then, last week, I found out how to make an actual three-dimensional Christmas tree. I made it using the same color (Fimo soft Emerald) I’d used for the cookie cutter charm. It’s a shame Fimo doesn’t offer Christmas tree green! I added two colors of balls (Indian Red and Metallic Gold) and added a Metallic Gold star for its top.

Later that week, one of my staff told me about a project she’d been working on in which she’d used a metal ring, a part of a tree trunk, a string of lights and some washi tape to create a Christmas decoration. I thought to myself, how fun would it be to glue my polymer clay Christmas tree onto the tree trunk and work from there.

On Friday, fully having the tree trunk and metal ring project in mind, I created a polymer clay snowman too. That was a bit harder, because it had to be smaller than the Christmas tree and of course the snowman includes more intricate features.

On Saturday, when the staff who’d talked about the tree trunk project came by, she showed me the tree trunk. I think here’s where my concept development is a bit lacking, as I had absolutely no idea how huge a tree trunk would be. In my mind, I had imagined a small piece of wood, but it was the actual trunk of an actual, large tree. Yes, she’d said a tree trunk, right? Needless to say my Christmas tree, which isn’t even 10cm high or 5cm wide, would be invisible when used on this trunk.

Instead of the trunk, we decided to use a small piece of cardboard to stick the Christmas tree and snowman onto. I am not sure how well they will remain secured, as I’ve heard mixed messages about glue and polymer clay. The fake snow we used to spread around the tree and snowman, also hardly stuck at all, but for now, it’s in its place.

We decided to use a much smaller ring than the one my staff had had in mind, because of course the large ring would again drown out my polymer clay sculptures. Since the string of lights was meant for the large ring, we couldn’t use that, but we could use some mini Christmas balls and washi tape.

I couldn’t do much in creating this final project, as most of the parts had to be glued together using a glue gun, but I don’t mind. I like that I at least did the polymer clay crafting.

Do you usually do any Christmas-related crafting?

Linking up with Inspire Me Monday and #LifeThisWeek.