Dear Readers,
Spring is getting closer ever day! Which bring fresh ideas, and new possibilities with new color pallets. What kinds of projects have you been doing with your molds? Are you ready for Spring holidays like Easter and St. Patrick's Day? If not, we have some inspiration for you today!
To help you get motivated this month, we'd like to share with you an article you might find helpful. "Your Best Creative Time Is Not When You Think" It will inspire you to try new ideas and find the best time for your creative mind to be at it's best!
Please take the time to sit back and enjoy this issue of My Molds!
All the best,
Marjorie with MadAboutMolds .com
News that Inspires Imagination!
"You're My Favorite Work Of Art"
The sky is the limit with what you can do with our molds. It's like magic when you first see the results. It takes very little work to make a piece that looks like it took hours to make. Don't you just loving making products that are one-of-a-kind items that you can't find anywhere else? With our molds, you are allowed to use your creations in anyway you wish. So feel free to have fun and make something you can be proud of. Think of all the Possibilities! Using our molds is easy and fun! You don't need to be ultra-talented to make items that look like they took hours to make. Learn how to make this charm step-by-step here.
Question: Can you bake polymer clay more than once?
A common question for those new to polymer clay is “Can you bake polymer clay more than once?” The answer is YES! There is no reason you can’t bake a piece of clay as many times as you need to. In fact, for complex pieces it’s common to bake parts of the piece separately and then assemble and attach them after baking. It’s also perfectly fine to attach raw clay to baked clay and bake that. Sometimes it’s the only way you can get certain effects.
Hand Sanitizer cleans clay residue off your hands.
After working with polymer clay, there is usually a residue on your hands which soap and water will not remove. Alcohol dissolves polymer clay, so it works well to rub some alcohol-based hand sanitizer gel into your hands, and then wipe them clean with a paper towel. Follow up with a soap and water wash and you’re good as new. (And rubbing alcohol is pretty great to have in the studio, too!)
Nail polish, spray paint, and solvents will degrade polymer clay.
For some reason, this polymer clay tip isn’t well known. It seems like such a simple solution to use nail polish to accent your polymer clay creations. Or use clear nail polish as a glaze. Don’t do it. Ever. Under any circumstances! The solvent in nail polish will begin to soften and dissolve your polymer clay, even baked clay, making it sticky and gooey over time. The same holds true for most varnishes and paints in spray cans. And also paints that are solvent based and require mineral spirits to clean your brushes. If you need a spray sealer to coat polymer clay, then you should use PYM II, a polymer clay safe protective coating.
Sharpie is not compatible with polymer clay.
I see Sharpie Markers recommended in tutorials all the time and I have to tell you…don’t do it. Sharpie markers are a great little tool and I love them for all sorts of crafts. But Sharpies are a solvent-based dye based marker. And that means that over time the dye will diffuse into the polymer, creating a “blur” or bleed. Use a pigment based marker instead, such as PITT Artist Marker or Microperm markers.
Store polymer clay in Ziploc sandwich bags.
Polymer clay can react with and dissolve some plastics. But plain old Ziploc sandwich bags are polymer clay safe. Plus you can zip the bag shut, keeping out dust. And if you’d like, you can label the bag with a Sharpie, removing all doubt about what brand of clay you put inside.
Did you know that March is National Craft Month? I guess that means if you’re a crafter you need to be busy all month long. LoL
I have a few St. Patrick’s Day crafts started and hopefully they will be finished before the 17th. {Grin}
Hard to believe that Easter will be here in a month. I have seen so many cute Easter ideas online that I am not sure of which ones to try! If the weather keeps up being so nice I may just have to move my crafting supplies outdoors so I can enjoy crafting AND the weather!
What crafts do you have planned for St. Patrick’s and Easter?
Your Best Creative Time
Morning people have more insights in the evening. Night owls have their breakthroughs in the morning.
A bus company in China has launched a new “safe driving” campaign by suspending bowls of water over their drivers. To avoid getting wet, drivers must drive gently. In today’s technology-obsessed world, this solution is elegantly primitive. You might imagine that this simple yet ingenious idea was conjured by someone functioning at their very best, that such “aha insights” come when innovators are at their peak.
Not so. A recent study by Mareike Wieth and Rose Zacks suggests that innovation and creativity are greatest when we are not at our best, at least with respect to our circadian rhythms. Circadian rhythms determine whether you are a “morning-type” person or an “evening-type” person, and are often measured with a short paper-and-pencil test called the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire. Circadian rhythms drive daily fluctuations in many physiological processes like alertness, heart rate and body temperature. Recent research indicates that these rhythms affect our intellectual functioning too.
Numerous studies have demonstrated that our best performance on challenging, attention-demanding tasks - like studying in the midst of distraction - occurs at our peak time of day. When we operate at our optimal time of day, we filter out the distractions in our world and get down to business.
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