Sunday, April 25, 2010

Technique of the Week #17- Translucent Liquid Clay

Project hours: 12 hours
Design and materials: 3 hours
Execution: 9 hours
This technique was inspired by Kelli Nina Perkins, a fabulous mixed media artist whom I have the great pleasure of knowing, and a technique she shared on Episode 306 of Quilting Arts TV.  This technique is how to take a medium by Sculpey, called Translucent Liquid Clay (TLC), and bake it onto a laser print copy to transfer the image onto the clay.  The clay is soft and can be stitched through.  I changed a couple of things, but had fun with this technique.
First off, you have to find the TLC, which was no small task.  Michaels no longer had a spot on the shelf for it, and Kelli mentioned Hobby Lobby as an alternative. I'm glad she did, though my pocketbook is not, I spent a lot of money in that store! 
Next up, you have to find an image.   I was trying to make this image into something usable for a thermofax screen, but it didn't work out for that, so I recycled my laser copy into artwork for this project.  The tv show with Kelli shows her using a color copy, and this is black and white.  Hmmm.
Using the clay is easy according to the directions, and it does tell you this stuff STINKS.  Open a window, use your ventilator.  Ick.
From there you wet and scrape the paper off of the back.  Now, this is "translucent" clay, not transparent.  So, this did not have the see-though effect I initially thought, and I can see why you would use a color copy now.  However, I took some fabric paint to the backside to color in the squid, and am happy with that effect!  It sewed easily and I can think of some other uses I would love to try this on.  Hope you try it and have fun!

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