A great way to set your work apart from that of other metal clay artists is to create your own textures. One of the lesser known ways to do this is with a hot glue gun. You can drizzle strands of hot glue over coated paper, coated card stock, vinyl wallpaper, or cured sheets of polymer clay to create your own dimensional designs that can be impressed into metal clay or polymer clay. It's fun to drizzle freeform designs, but you also can draw or print out a design and then trace over it with the hot glue, or mark an evenly spaced grid as a guide for applying a symmetrical pattern of lines, dots, swirls, squares, or other motifs.
An interesting variation is to create a hot glue-patterned texture roller, which will allow you to impress a seamless, continuous texture on even very large slabs of metal clay or polymer clay. Start with a length of PVC pipe as long as the desired width of your texture plus 4", since you will leave the last 2" on either end of the pipe without texture to make it easier to roll the texture across the clay in a smooth motion with even pressure. So, for example, an 8" length of PVC pipe will provide a 4" section in the center for the texture.
Don't forget to use a clay release agent with your hot glue texture sheets or texture rollers.
For more detailed information about making hot glue texture sheets and texture rollers, see the Make your own one-of-a-kind textures to use with metal clay! section of my Squidoo lens on creating Textures in Metal Clay. This hot glue method for making custom texture sheets or texture rollers is just one of literally dozens of metal clay texturing techniques you'll find in that lens.
If you make (or have made) a hot glue texture sheet or roller, please share a photo of it. I'd love to see what you do with this technique!
Thanks and happy claying,
Margaret
© 2012 Squidoo Metal Clay Lenses by MSchindel. All rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment