Summer has finally arrived and I am excited.  Since classes are done, I have time to practice my polymer clay techniques.  I’ll be traveling a lot over the next few months so in the beginning of June I have to say goodbye to my polymer clay oven and leave most of my craft supplies behind.  Therefore I plan to make as much as I can to practice and use up my spare clay.  The first attempt to create something was this cat.  I used Christie Friesen‘s cat tutorial book to help me with the face (that’s the book in the background).  I had planned it as a gift before I went away (she left for a few weeks so I wanted to give it to her early) but I’m not happy with it.

  My friends’ cat is a stripped gray cat and I had planned to paint darker gray acrylic paint to make it more accurate.  I don’t like the body so I think I’ll keep this one unpainted and practice a few more times.  This one is made of FIMO clay but I have some other brands to test out and use up.  This next two weeks is going to be fun as I have fun with clay and experiment.  What is your favorite critter that you’ve made, of clay or any other media?

This year I decided to make a few of my Christmas gifts and tried to decide what to make.  I finally decided to make my brother the Serenity, the ship from the movie Serenity and the TV show Firefly, and his wife two minions from the Dispicable Me franchise.  I made the minions first.

The two minions I made my sister-in-law for Christmas 2014

I debated making them with legs to be more accurate but I didn’t trust my skills to make the minions able to stand by themselves.  I debated making them sitting but finally decided to do the easy way and just give them solid bases.  I started out by getting a piece of aluminum foil and crumpled it tightly into a long snake before bending it in half and crumbling it into the correct shape.  Then I wrapped it in athletic tape and tied a piece of wire around its stomach so I could connect the arms later.  Then I covered the piece with yellow, blue, and black Fimo clay, added the details, and baked them.   I enjoyed making these guys and glazed the eyes to create the illusion of glass in their goggles.

The next day I started and finished the Serenity space ship and added a leaf under it.

My Christmas gift to my brother: Serenity.

I had a day to make this so I used a mold to make the green leaf and cut some wire to go from nose to tail.  I wrapped some more wire around the long wire to keep the wings on and got out my black Fimo clay.  I shaped the black clay into the individual shapes I wanted (I had more black clay than the silver clay ) then covered them with metallic silver clay before baking both the leaf and the Firefly class spaceship called Serenity.  I had hoped to create the effect of multiple metal plates creating the skin of the ship but I ran out of time and it would have been VERY hard to create all the colors, pieces, and parts to make it look like the ship of the Firefly series DVD box set so I left it the basic ship.

Both my creations were well received and I enjoyed making them.  I may have to do more polymer creations!  🙂