Mokume Gane Online Tutorials

We've been discussing Mokume gane in one of my ebay groups, and I started to compile a list of tutorials. Here's what I've got so far:

Mudpile Mokume Gane
Mini Mokume Gane
Mokume Gane
This n That Mokume gane
Lindly Haunani's translucent mokume gane
Papernclay mokume gane tutorial
Four color Mini Mokume Gane
Painted Mokume Gane
Mokume Gane with Pinata Inks

If someone wants to add to the list, feel free!!

Newly sanded/buffed

Just popping in to display the most recently baked beads du jour...

Brushing off the dust...

It's so hard to get back into the swing of things when you've had to stop for a bit. I have to take my brain out of storage and brush off the dust and get back to blogging!

For consideration, then, a bowl of beads I'm very pleased with. The down side is that my back took a beating from the sanding I did on Saturday and I paid dearly on Sunday and Sunday night. I guess I need to do sanding in small doses rather than in batches... I sanded about 20 beads that night.

Fortunately, I've been doing better since then. I just have to be careful. Sigh. I have more beads waiting to be baked. I want to get a pan full before I put them in.

The mokume gane beads in the picture were made with some older Van Aken Polyclay (before it was called Kato!) and I was very happy with the finished product. I had to get past the horrible new-vinyl odor, which is the reason I never really worked with it much before.

Yesterday I gave blood. This is a critical time to donate, because donations are down and supplies are low after the holidays. Take some time, save a life!

Now, for your viewing pleasure... Hershey and the raisin dance!! He gets one raisin per day. If he gets too many, his digestive system is thrown out of whack. So my husband gives him one raisin when he comes home from work. To call Hershey a raisin addict would be an understatement... Enjoy!

Eggs!

When I first started creating with polymer clay, I attempted to cover everything that would go in the oven. (Doesn't everyone?)

I covered bottles, jars, cans, pens.... and then I joined a polymer clay central swap (I think it was 1999) for covered eggs.

I attempted, with limited success, to place slices of canes on the blown out eggs and smooth them out toward one another. I'm not a swearing person under normal circumstances. However... there were several eggs that wound up with my thumb or finger breaking through the shell just as I was placing the last couple of cane slices ever so carefully... just so... @#$&*#


I did, in the end, finish the requisite number to send out. Sanded and sanded and sanded and buffed on my blue jeans.

Now, those of you who are smarter than I was then have probably already figured out that there is a much more secure method for covering eggs: cover with a thin layer of clay, making sure to pierce that "blow hole", and baking. When I read that tip, I felt like such an idiot!! Ah, well, not the first time and certainly not the last...

I did get better at it...

Feathered egg with a cane made from a tutorial on Polymer Clay Central.

This is one of my more recent eggs, using mokume gane.

"Smokey" mokume gane

I was looking through some old listing photos from my hard drive ...yeah, yeah, I was taking a break from cleaning the house *cough* can you say "procrastination?" and decided to share these two from 2005.

I believe I made an actual mokume gane block with translucent layers and thin layers of black to achieve this look. I layered slivers over different colors.

I am packing up my clay from the kitchen table so we can eat there when my mother in law comes (Two days from now!!!). It's truly a pain, and boring, and tedious... but I suspect in the end it will be a "good thing".

I have been talking about reclaiming my craft room for... oh, about a year? I have this big table with a large sheet of glass on it up there. Can't see it, but it's there!! So if I can get that cleared off, my little television moved into place, my canes organized...

...who am I kidding? Sigh. Maybe tomorrow I will believe it can be done...

Having way too much fun...

... with mokume gane again!! (This one's on ebay)

I had a lot of sheets left over with this color combo, so I went ahead and used them up.

Stayed home this weekend and started decluttering my living room (shudder, sneeze), and trying to get some beads listed to sell. As of this moment, I have one up on Just Beads, one on Etsy, and four on Ebay (taking advantage of the last couple of days of their listing sale).

Other news, I resigned my position as polymer clay instructor at Michael's. Too much going on with my parents' health, and I'm just not able to give the job the attention it needs.

I've always kind of wanted to offer a class a month on my own, at a place of my own choosing, with clay/supplies included in the price. I just don't know where to hold them. Something to research and plan for next year?

That, and getting a tax ID number so I can sell at the Urbana farmer's market in the summer.

So many dreams...

Adding my own color today!

Here is a little wild mokume gane work with those ghost flowers and spots floating on the surface. This time I chose to sand and buff the piece.

It's so hard to decide sometimes whether or not to sand & buff. Matte and shiny each have their own unique qualities!

Wild and Crazy Mini-mokume gane

The other day I made this set (not a necklace yet, just strung to photograph)

Here is the remaining (raw) mini mokume gane sheet
Psychedelic, man!!

Dragonfly Crazy

The dragonfly, now called "tombo" in Japanese, used to be called "akitsu". Japan was once called Akitsushima meaning "The Island of the Dragon-fly".

Traditionally known as katsumushi or the "invincible insect", the dragonfly was a favorite symbol of strength among Japanese warriors.



These dragonflies are set on bases of mokume gane polymer clay - one mini mokume gane, one with translucent and copper foil. Katsumushi incorporates some tiny dichroic droplets by Kelly Keniston to form the body and the centers of the eyes.

Enjoy!

More Mokume Gane

Something about the randomness of mokume gane calls to me from time to time. My muse is stalled, but the desire to create remains... so I roll out the layers of tinted translucent with copper leafing in between, press craters into the bottom layer, and see what slices off the top.

A friend of mine characterizes us both as magpies... well, the joy of seeing that leafing popping through satisfies the magpie in me as well!!

Mokume Gane

Mokume gane with metal

Mokume is a mixed-metal laminate with distinctive layered patterns. Literally translating as "wood eye (i.e., burl) metal".

Mokume Gane with Polymer Clay

When we use the term in polymer clay, the process is very similar to metal work in that many layers of different colored polymer clay are layered, "distressed" and sliced to reveal the layers.

In the case of "mini-mokume-gane", a technique demonstrated in an online tutorial on Polymer Clay Central, several layers of clay are layered, run through a pasta machine, stacked, run through a pasta machine, stacked again, and run through a pasta machine once again.

A texture plate is then impressed in the resulting stacked sheet. I prefer to lay a clear texture sheet misted with water on top of the layers and roll over it with a brayer, because I feel like I have more control over it than if I were to place the texture sheet and layers back through the pasta machine.

I went through a little "mini-mokume-gane" frenzy a few weeks ago, and thus have a bowl of beads and pendants waiting to be sanded and buffed. Here is one of those beads I finally got finished up today:


This stack had, I believe, yellow, metallic green, metallic fuschia, blue and black. As a result, some mica shift is evident in the dots. I love it!