So I’ve been gone for a little while. Mid-late July was consumed by frantically finishing a basic lace wrap for my mother’s birthday (which I have yet to take pictures of, oops!). After that, I finished up a bag I was knitting, vaguely based on the Saturday Market Bag. I still need to attach the straps to it, so no pictures of that either. Then, I put all of my crafts on hold to go on a week-long jaunt to Memphis.

Now that I’m back, I’m excitedly working on a polymer clay sculpture that I believe is my best sculpture ever, by far, and I’ve only just finished the face. However, I’m keeping the details a surprise; all I will say is that it’s based off of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I knew I wanted to make this as soon as I finished that book, and I already have two more I’d like to do. I’m excited because it’s my first piece of fanart–although I love fanart, my drawing skills are terrible (I hit my drawing peak at 14, it’s been downhill ever since), and I’ve never created anything worth sharing. I hope this project will be finished in the next week or so, because I can’t wait to share it.

But since I haven’t taken pictures of any of my recent accomplishments, we’ll go back in time and visit a failed project from May.

This was my first time working with liquid polymer clay, and I was very excited. It was supposed to be a mother’s day present, a stained glass-like piece based off of a pattern I found through a random Google image search (I haven’t been able to find the picture/link again, so if you recognize the image this project was based on or it is on your site, please let me know so I can give proper credit). Of course, despite spending several hours on it, I did not know three very important things:

1) Acrylic paint and liquid polymer is a not a combination that you should bake, ever.
2) Aside from the obvious weird effect you shall see in a moment, this is also a combination that burns easily and smells terrible afterward.

3) Liquid clay doesn’t harden as regular polymer clay does; it becomes rubbery.

Exhibit A:

See how the acrylic paint made everything all puffy and foamy? And how severely burnt it is? And also how that segment covering her boob is clearly her hair and should therefore be red? Yeah, me too. Needless to say, it never made it to my mother.

On the positive, I really loved how the parts I used Pearl-Ex pigments on (the red hair and silver stars) came out. Too bad I didn’t have them in blue and green, or this project would have turned out very differently. It still would’ve been too flimsy to hang up stained glass-style like I had planned, but overall it was a very good (if time-consuming and wasteful) learning experience.

Two more shots for good measure:

Poor little mermaid.

Until next time, fearless readers!