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Ramble
Index
What Was That All About?
Wednesday, September 26, 2001 3:01 AM
Claymates:
That subject line is what
Marlon Brando wants to say as his last words. "What was THAT all
about?" For some reason it always breaks me up. Ok, So what
was that all about, them two tutorials, and why shoot them through so
quickly? Oh the old timers will tell ya, there's a method to my madness.
The mini Plumeria inspired
flowers littering the Hawaii
Tin
or this bigger than a lot of real orchids flower on the Rumble in the Jungle tin,
they show one thing, it don't matter if you mini or not. The trick is not to limit yourself to one size or the other automatically. I'd like to get some miniaturists to think... "Hey, life size magnolias, wouldn't that be pretty?" Yes it would and it would be easy too. No one is stopping mini makers from thinking life size with their clay.
I made this orchid for more than
tempting Paulo to come out and clay ( Hey honey!) , although that
would be cool if it did. As our CoPeepstress Michele/luny reminded me
that she had once said, "If it ain't life size, it's
miniature." Ask yourself, is what you do, make flowers this
honking big? Are the embellishments you put on tins, pins, pendants,
earrings life sized anything? I wonder. This flower could be life
size, although I've seen many orchids much smaller. Even though
life size is doable, can you wear it out and about? Put it on a
shelf maybe. Practical it's not, can't really slip this big orchid
into my schlepping pouch. The mini flowers....now that tin can travel,
the mini flowers cluster close to one another and make a good strong
structure.
These two tutorials were
thrown together in quick succession to show you also that it doesn't
take all that much time to do these things. Using some of the Easy
Breezy techniques of making your life easier it goes by quickly. Quick
enough to satisfy the most impatient of clayers. I still got chores
done and family time enjoyed and goof around time as well as nattering
on the list and got these puppies done, up and shown. The hardest part
of writing is....come on you know the answer...putting the seat of the
pants to the seat of the chair.
It's more of a matter of
having your work space set up for the spur of the moment clay run and
going with your flow. I'm hoping that these tutorials will give
you a shove in the general direction of your work space chair. When
you get there, set on down. Think of the last thing that filled your
heart, touched you in some way. Let that thing come out in your clay.
The next thing that brings
you delight or fills you with awe: a sunset, a kitten sleeping in
the dappled sunlight of a fall afternoon, a humming bird, or a really
nice bug, note it. Bronze the moment. That moment of awe or joy is our
natural space. Those moments are what makes our lives enriched and
there's truth to those things that will most likely resonate in other
humans if they saw the things you made inspired by it.
The next thing that gives
your heart joy, use that as inspiration to do something in clay. We
can't order inspiration online and pay with PayPal. We can't find it
in a box of candy like a surprise. We got to snatch it out of life.
That's why I made the Plumeria mini flowers right after Jainnie showed
us her back yard. I wanted to show you that you too can go from
seeing some picture and slap dashing something out, fired on your own
juice, your muse being goosed. I thought...lopsided sunny
side up egg with yolk broken, no problem. I wanted to show also that
canes can be just two colors and used as elements like petals and not
always some symbol on a disk. Nifty thing about three dimensional
flowers is you can use just one color and get away with it.
Clay Tip Troll Booth:
Oh some might ask what the
mix was of the orchid. Remember those star flowers on the Hawaii tin?
That cane was made of crimson and that Leigh rose made of yellow and
orange fire rose cane, that is the button on the top of the tin.
I took the scraps of that clay run and mixed it with pearl and then
did a skinner blend of that mix with pearl. Accordion pleated it,
not the jelly roll because I didn't want the pearl in the middle but
at the ends of the petals. The cane was a large triangle, well sort of
a over inflated heart that was triangular- ish. One could hold
it between the thumb and forefinger of their hand. I cut thick slices
and made a spoon shape. Then taking the outer crimson edges I pulled
the clay into ruffles, grab a bit and pull in opposite
directions, move on down the edge and do it again. Easy Breezy flamenco
skirt fluting. Can get carried away with some Carmen Miranda ruffles
if we wanted to, but I digress. The pearl end was bowled up from
underneath to counter point the bowl going in the other direction with
the crimson end of the petal.
The center of the orchid was
the Plumeria scraps and end canes mixed to a pearl yellow and run
into a sheet, the center was crimson with pearl and I made a bullseye
cane and reduced it, sliced it and stacked until I got a good enough
amounts of spots. The round shapes were just quick bowls stuck
face down. Boink.
The spotted area of the orchid
blossom was a bullseye cane that was in the shape of an elongated
cone, wide at one end and narrow at the other. Then it was flattened
from the middle going to the widest end. Sliced into equal sections of
the same length they were stacked, little bullseyes with little, big
elongated bullseyes with big. Mashed together and took two slices.
Pulled the slices to tear shape and sliced off the outer edge, because
the inside of the Orchid was like that. Top with a half moon of the
matching crimson/pearl that was the spots and made the
flutes. Think Julie Child, that's how I clay. A bit of this, a splash
of that, sip the cooking sherry...well maybe not.
For our cane makers...you can
use cane as an intermediate step to a larger object. A cane need
not be the end of your clay trick, make a smiley face and then you
have a hundred smiley face disks, but rather the beginning of
something that incorporates that cane as one of many design
elements.
That's all I can think of as
to why I did this and now I'm off to winky nods. It's been a good
couple of days.
xoxo
NJ
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