How-To's &
Projects at The PolyClay Gallery
Making
miniatures and making dolls are ongoing projects here along with all sorts of
other media work, including these web pages detailing them.
Aunt Acid is a polymer
clay headed puppet with a cloth body. She wears polymer clay accessories
too, of course, and hand dyed clothing along with vintage bits and pieces.
The step-by-step tutorial
on how she was made is found on her own website.
In the process of
putting together The Aunt Acid Show we are building mosaic sets and props, dyeing
curtains and costumes, and getting all sorts of stuff and nonsense to come
together in new ways.
Images of Bryan's recent mosaic tiled piece The
Little Blue Glass Guitar are used in creating graphics for one of the set
at the Blue Swirl Bar & Grill (where Aunt Acid appears, coming
soon!)
He's working
on tiling several new instruments and furniture.
See his mosaics
here.
Take a look at his latest
table using ceramics and two part
epoxy resin here.
Covering eggs and decorating them
with polymer clay is fun and the results are beautiful! Learn how to easily empty
and prepare the eggs and decorate them. Decorative
filigree cut-away is a great technique to use with mica bearing clays.
Miniature dioramas
and doll furnishings like the mini
bedroom set make great use of polymer clay for decorative details when
used with all sorts of different techniques. Rubber
stamps and molds let you bring
a lot of detail into this kind of work. The set above uses polymer clay to
mimic wood, ivory, marble and more.
The vanity
sets seen above also made of polymer clay, and there is now a PDF how-to
available for purchase.
Here's a tutorial on painting
cloth faces onto canvas bags, or for use on dolls!
Spirit
Dolls can be made of all sorts of materials including of hand dyed
cloth and sewn from your own or other patterns, or pre-made bodies that
are commercially available can be dyed, painted, beaded and embellished in
countless ways.
They can be made in all sizes and
styles, however you want them to look is completely between you and the doll!
I like making dolls of all sorts,
cloth, polymer clay, ceramics, and paper.
When I scanned and digitized
my line of paper dolls I began to
play with them in Adobe Photoshop. Digital
doll art is lots of fun!
See how I dressed Belle in her Christmas
Outfit.
Here's
a free downloadable PDF
that includes a pattern I've designed for making Spirit Dolls like the fiery
one seen at right using the materials of your choice for the body.
The simple pattern can be enlarged or
reduced as you choose. I like to use the polymer clay faces or
ceramic faces that I make. I put them together with dyed cottons
and silks as well as other bits of ribbons and sequins and package them as
Spirit Doll Kits.
Look for more of them to be available
this Spring through our etsy store, including new versions with ceramic faces,
buttons, and hand dyed fabric and ribbons.
We're
also selling supplies for you to use in your projects. These are
some of the items currently available in our
storefront at Etsy where we have mosaic tiles,
faces, beads and other items there for purchase. Etsy.com is an online artisans' venue where handmade and vintage items are
featured. for purchase. Check back to see what comes up next as we get ready
for Spring!
The picture at right shows some of the the face cabochon styles that
you can now purchase and use in your doll and wearable art projects.
Click
here to see more about the face
styles available in polymer and ceramic clay. We're also experimenting
with precious metal clays and new glass frit clay too. We like to live up to
our "polyclay" name!
Making your own faces is a lot of fun, as any kid
knows! Make face cabochons for decorating boxes, wall hangings, wearable
art--and dolls!
You can costume and style a face in lots of different
ways.
To put together this red hot Red Hat wall hanging, you start with sculpting the face, and then dress it
up.
This four page tutorial starts you out with step by step instructions
on sculpting a face using scrap polymer
clay. The next part makes replication a breeze with easy to use silicone RTV
mold materials. Make faces or make texture sheets
and
use them to dress up the faces as shown
in the fourth segment of this fun filled project.
The 
Try making the 
