Have you ever wanted to make your own dolls or accessories, but don't want to go to the expense of purchasing a kiln and all that entails?
What about polymer clay? What about the liquid air drying slip?
You may be very pleasantly surprised to find what can be done with these materials.
The first method is using polymer clay - Fimo, Sculpy, and other brand names of the same general materials.
The second method is using the air drying pourable slips, such as Flumo and Liquache. Esther van der Spek has done a wonderful tutorial on using these materials, and you can find it at:
http://www.magicminiatures.com/TutorialFlumo.htm
Here is a link where you can purchase Flumo in the US. And if you need it in quantity, you can buy it wholesale.
http://www.artistique.us/
Although Esther demonstrates pouring with Flumo, the technique is just the same for Liquache.
If you find the tutorial as great as I found it, please send a note to Esther thanking her for all her hard work on this tutorial.
The tutorial is on making dolls, but it would be equally viable for making containers and other molded articles usually made of china.
USING THESE MOLDS WITH POLYMER CLAY
Our molds are made from plaster, for use with porcelain or low fired clay. When clay is fired in a kiln, it shrinks. This means that the dolls poured in porcelain are about 17% to 20% smaller when they are finished than they were when they first came out of the mold.
The saving grace, is that doll heads and limbs, like human heads and limbs, come in many sizes. So, although polymer clay heads and limbs are a bit larger than the same porcelain fired heads and limbs, they are still very useable. John makes his doll molds for dolls that have a fabric body. This means you can adjust the height and girth.
You need to decide if you want to attach a swivel head to a shoulder plate permanently, or if you want the head to swivel on your PC doll. If you want the head to swivel, you need to figure out how to attach a doubled elastic (doll elastic, not regular rubber bands) into the head. If you are baking the PC at a low temperature for a long time, you can bake the head with the elastic inserted in the head and the two ends coming out at the bottom of the neck. And of course you have to put a hole through the shoulder plate for the elastic to go through.
When John is working with a new head, he will often make it in polymer clay so that he can change and refine the features. He pushes the clay firmly into one side of the mold, pushes more clay firmly into the other side of the mold, and then pushes the two parts of the mold tightly together. The clay will squeeze out around the edges of the piece. He opens the mold and trims the excess clay.... carefully, then repeats the process until the head fits exactly right and there is no excess clay.
John does not use any release agent. It has never been necessary. He tends to leave the item in the mold for a while before trying to work with it, so that the PC will set up and not be quite so pliable and liable to warp or get finger prints.
It is possible to bake the item right in the plaster mold, but this will make the mold deteriorate very quickly. It is better to leave the PC to set up for a while before removing it from the mold, and then bake just the PC.
This is the general way to make heads and limbs in PC. For a shoulder plate, it is necessary to roll out a piece of PC and then fit it into the mold. You don't want it solid.
Here is a fun piece that John made using a 1/2 scale doll mold for the body and arms.....
He called this piece "The Flycatcher"
It is, of course, a one-off piece.
