Mini Watercolours

I have made these miniature watercolour painting's 6 x 9cm on paper in a black resin frame. These are part of a group exhibition with a tattoo theme ‘Needles and Pens’ opening this November 2nd at White Lady Art, Temple Bar, Dublin.

Floating Ribbon 1

Floating Ribbon 2

Love Bird

Burning Heart

Needles and Pens

I have been in the studio working on these new painting's in acrylic, charcoal and resin, 45cm on a round supports. I'm painting these as part of a group exhibition with a tattoo theme ‘Needles and Pens’ opening this November 2nd at White Lady Art, Temple Bar, Dublin.
These paintings began with charcoal under drawings, They were then fixed with clear acrylic spray lacquer, once this lacquer was dry I painted in details and backgrounds with acrylic paint. These were then coated with a glassy two part resin, I used a screen print squeegee to level the poured on resin.

Here are the photos of the charcoal under drawings and the finished pieces:

Blue Willow

The theme of this piece is inspired by my mothers dish-ware, 'Willow Pattern' . There is a romantic Chinese fable behind the plates,
the daughter of a Chinese dignitary falling in love with a gardener or such lowly profession, forbidden love, drama, in the end the lovers turned themselves into swallows to be able to be together.

Rosie 2013

 

Charm Update!: Polymer Clay Layerd Cakes

I have been making lots of new jewelry pieces recently, the above charm bracelet features some of the polymer clay cakes I have been making. I'm really enjoying these and have some new ideas for some other charms.

I wanted to do a little process blog on how these are made:

I start by rolling out three colors of polymer clay these set the type of cakes I am making, this time mint and chocolate cream and strawberry and chocolate cream. I do this with a pasta machine, a tool used for rolling out lasagne sheets. Set to its thickest setting because these will be the middle cake layers. I use three sizes of circle cutters to cut the cakes into rings. I didn't have a very tiny circle cutter so I used a lid of a ball point pen and cut the top off with a blade.

I started with the biggest cutter and cut a circle of each of the colors, then cut the second circle into these making the first circle a hoop, I did this again with the middle circle.

The next stage is making a new full circle from all the pieces, it kind of looks like a target.

I made enough for 4 full cakes in each colour spectrum :)

I then stacked the circles to create the layered cake.

I rolled out a very thin layer of the chocolate brown colour to ice the cake, I do this by wrapping the cake up in the icing.

Here are the cakes wrapped in the icing! I did this same process with the mint chocolate cakes...

Here are the cakes, I put them on a board in the freezer for 5 mins to chill before I cut them, this stops the colours blurring together when I slice them. I also chilled a bit of the mint green for some decorative stars I want to add, cut with a plunger cutter:

Here is the cake slice, the layering made the cake have a checkerboard effect. I added texture to the sponge part of the cake slice with a toothbrush. I used a eye screw to make the charm cake hang-able the stars have a tiny glass gem, plastic gems are no good for fimo cakes as they would melt in the oven.

 

I cut some slices of fimo strawberry
canes to add to the strawberry cake these are made with a process called Mileflorie.

I made a small twist of white as cream and added the fruit strawberry. Yummy! These are now ready to bake!

The finished charms are available in my shop on my website individually or as part of a individual jewelry piece.