You'll need light colored clay to make a mold, black to make your cloissonne' piece, a couple of ceramic tiles, leafing foil (I like silver because it doesn't have a color cast), a v-cutter, a pattern, liquid Sculpey - mostly the translucent type, but a little of the opaque can add interest, and either permanent inks (I used Fiesta inks) or Genesis heat-set oil colors. You'll also need a blade and something to apply and clean up the colors and liquid Sculpey. |
The easiest way that I've found to transfer the drawing to the clay is to re-draw the lines on the back of your pattern using an ordinary ball point pen. With a thick sheet of clay lying on a ceramic tile, burnish the pattern well onto the surface of the clay, ball point ink side down. Wait a few minutes and lift one edge. If the lines are clear, you can remove the pattern. If they're not clear or dark enough to follow, yet, burnish the pattern back onto the clay, wait a few more minutes and try again. |
The softness of the clay will have a lot to do with how fast the drawing transfers. When you have a nice clear outline to follow in order to cut the drawing with the v-cutter, trim your sheet of clay and leave it right on the tile to bake. I use Premo, so I cured this at 275º for half an hour to make it strong. This mold will remain on the tile through the process for easier handling. |
Working slowly, use your v-cutter to cut the lines of your designs rather deeply. You want to have enough depth so that when you mold the surface to be "enamelled," the lines will be deep enough to contain the liquid Sculpey. |
Prepare a thick sheet of black clay and roll it onto another ceramic tile. I use the thickest setting of my pasta machine for both the mold and the sheet that I will be enamelling. |
Apply a sheet of leafing foil to the black clay, and dust the mold with a release agent - I use baby powder, but you could use cornstarch or a mist of water. I wouldn't recommend ArmorAll for this particular method because it might prevent the TLS from sticking to the leafing foil. |
Lay the tile with the mold on it over the clay to be molded. Now, be careful not to let the mold shift side to side. You're going to have to use a lot of pressure to get the black clay forced into the lines you've cut into the mold. I usually sandwich both tiles between two pieces of wood and stand on the stack to get enough pressure. |
The leafing foil will crackle here and there and that's fine. In fact, you can crackle the leafed clay before you adhere it to the tile and get some interesting looks. Make sure that you've got a good impression - the walls of each "cell" should be deep enough that it will contain a thin layer of TLS without letting one color spill into the next "cell." |
I like to use the Genesis paints to pre-color some of the areas. If I tint some of the leaves blue, some brown and some yellow, then I will only need one shade of tinted green in order to have several shades of green in the final leaves. The paint will need to cure for 5 minutes at 250º before we can put start putting the TLS on. You can also use permanent inks for this step. |
Fill the cells with very small amounts of tinted Translucent Liquid Sculpey (TLS) A pointed applicator is handy for this, or you can use small brushes. The layer of TLS should be very thin. I've applied some inks to the background here to hint at a flower bed full of flowers. Cure the first layer at 300º - again, I'm using Premo and I know that it will take the extra heat. I never had a problem with burning Fimo at the higher heat, though, either. As you can guess an oven thermometer is very important. |
After the first curing, I will apply another layer of TLS. Here, I'm tinting the frame with Fiesta inks, a mix of magenta and purple. I applied it rather heavily, then used a cotton swab soaked with cleaner to remove it from the center of each cell area. |
Be careful not to let the TLS build up on the top of your lines - TLS is very difficult to sand, and we're going to want to sand off the top to expose the black lines of the design when we're done with the TLS. Puddle tiny amounts of the colors you choose into each cell and smooth the liquid clay out to the edges of the outlines. Fill all the cells with color. For the background, I've dripped in tiny bits of opaque white and swirled it around to make the background recede. |
Keep spill-overs mopped up as you work, and keep the level of TLS below the tops of your lines. I'm mixing purple tinted TLS with tiny drips of opaque white Liquid Sculpey for the frame. |
Outside the oval frame, I've tinted the leafing foil with Lime Green and Rainforest Green - again, applied rather thickly and then removed with a cotton swab dipped in Fiesta cleaning solution. |
I managed to obliterate some of my black lines with TLS, so those were a pain to sand down, but it's ready to make into a box or something. |
I played with a mixture of TLS, Rhein Gold powder and diluent in the fine line pens to go over the black lines on this one. I like how it looks more like cloisonne'. |
This was a box I made some time ago with the same Dover pattern. I made the design for the tiles on the side to match the lid of the box. |
A bit different - these are fairly large, about 3 X 4½", I think, and heavy. |
This is smaller, about 2 X 3" - the TLS enamel panels were set into raw clay slabs to construct the box. |
The panels are sanded and buffed before they're set into the raw clay. Another simple geometric pattern. |
This is a close-up of one of the iris panels. |
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