With the armature built we can begin to sculpt clay right onto it.  This technique is essetially the same one I use when I make poseable mixed media dolls.  We'll begin adding clay to the shorter of the two ends to create the head.  

We will be working small.  That's a chance for me to use my new reading glasses!  There are a couple resons for this.  First, most people don't want something huge coiled around their ear.  Second is really more about weight.  At each step in the project we'll need to balance out the demands of weight vs. artistic detail.   You can see above the sphere of clay that will be the dragon's head is a bit smaller in diameter than a penny.  I couldn't find a dime, but if I could they would be the same diameter.  Roll that sphere into a slightly elongated cone.  Don't worry about getting it perfect just yet because in a second you are going to just mash it onto the frame.  The photo to the right shows the mashing.  I have gripped the head by the fattest part and slowly pushed it over the loop in the wire so that the loop is totally inside the head.  

Onve the head is on that armature I tend to gently squeeze the clay just around the bottom where it mets the wire to snug it up.  You don't want to squeeze so hard youlose your shape, just enough to secure it.  I also at this stage add extra suppprt so that the head doesn't wobble around as I work on it by taking a small strip of clay, adding it to the, base of the head, and smoothing it on with my paddle tool.  For a second it will look like your dragon has whiplash!

Now we'll add the eyes.  Use one of the ball stylus tools to make indentations where you think the eye should be.  Dragon anatomy is flexible and will look nice with a number of different eye placement options!  To make the eye socket a bit bigger I make tiny circles with the stylus to widen it out just like the picture on the right.  at this stage I will make little spheres for eyeballs and either bake them for 5 minures at 265 degrees F or I will use a heat gun to cure them on a ceramic tile.  

The reason I cure the eyeballs is that it makes it so much easier to get them into the socket in a more believable way and to sculpt detail around without deforming the shape of the eyeball.  You can see that I have inserted them about 2/3 of the way in the socket.  I tend to make my dragons with eyes more like lizards and frogs and less like humans whose eyeballs are more fully recessed into the socket.  Push them in very slowly so you don't deform the clay of the head.  Next we'll need to make upper and lower eyelids.  I generally do a sort of trial and error process in measuring out the clay for the eyelids.  You want them to be thin but also to reach corner to corner.  You can see above right the size I made the larger upper and smaller lower lid clay.

More to come, slower than I would like, but we'll get it done!

Roll the spheres into a sausage shape and then gently press them flat as shown upper left.  The larger pieces are for the upper lids and the smaller pieces are for the lower.  Position the upper lid as shown.

The lower lid is placed in a similar way and then you simply use your paddle tool to blend the edges into the clay of the head (paddle side down).  Do not touoch the edges of the clay that lay over your cured eyeball with the tool.  This makes the eyelids look rough and tears them.  You can smooth any tool marks with a soft paintbrush.  Next we'll move onto the nostrils.   Make tiny tear drop shapes roughly the size shown above right.  Flatten them slightly by pressing down with your finger.  

place your two teardrop pieces of clay as shown to begin the nostril.  At upper right the edges of the clay additions have been gently blended into the head clay and brushed with a soft paint brush to remove tool marks.  Using the paddle tool, blend only the very edges of the nostrils.  The common mistake people make in the beginning is getting the tool too close to the middle of the tear drop and blending the shape away.

Once the edges of the nostrils are blended, use the ball stylus tool to make an indentation in the center of each.  I also go back in with the needle tool to shape the hole you made into a matching tear drop shape.  You can also see in the upper left that I have used the X-acto to make a cut below the nostril to make the mouth.  After the cut is made you will want to use the paddle tool and paint brush to smooth down the rough edges of the cut.  Think lips. round the edges over to make some nice dragon lips!  I also added some shaping to the tip of the nose once I got the lips smoothed and pressed back up a bit.  I simply pinched nostril area into a point and then tapped it into a nice downward curve.

Next we'll use some translucent clay to make the horns.  Translucent clay bakes to a semi-transparent quality.  Begin by making 4 tiny spheres of equal size.  Next roll those into an elongated teardrop shape and place the tips of that shape together like in the photo in the upper left.  Holdiing the thicker base in one hand and the tip in the other, twist the pieces together to end up with a pair of horns.  I tend to cut off part of the base because it gets mashed a bit during this process and I want the horns to look cleaner when I add them to the dragon.  

Place the horns more or less slightly to the rear of the head from the center of the eye and blend them a bit into the head clay.  We'll add in the ears next and use the ears and horns to support each other so that the piece is not fragile.  The upper right photo shows the size of the sphere used for the ear.  Roll each ear into a long-ish tear drop shape.

Flatten the tear drop and fold it in half as shown in the upper left.  Place the ear on the dragon far enough back from the eye that you won't destroy the eye area as you blend the ear clay onto the head.  

Both pictures above show the ears being blended onto the head.  I have also positioned the horns so they touch the ears and add to each other some strength and support.  It is key in working with polymer clay that any thin areas are supported by something or they most certainly break off with wear.

As this is sort of an experimental piece meant to allow both you and I to get an idea for the next stages of refinement to the design, I will not spend a lot of time decorating the piece.  But here are some basic additions that will get you started in planning out how to make these pieces uniquely yours and add some intrigue to them.  Some basic geeen leaves are made with the steps above left.  I also added a round disc to his head and carved out a little divot in it with the larger ball stylus tool.  I'llprobably fill this with glitter!  Go as crazy as you want with detail!  On the next one I make I will likely add more detail to it.  I am already seeing logistical changes I'd make to the design.  I get asked frequently how I design new products.  This is how!  Get an idea, try out the basics and make changes.  Generally it takes me about 3-4 prototypes before I have something completed fully.  

With the sculpt on the head done, We move to the other end of the cuff and make a tail to wrap behng and down over your upper ear.  Begin with a ball of clay above.  

You guessed it.  Roll that sucker out into an elongated cone.  Next use either the X-acto or the clay scraper to cut the cone in half.  

Here is where you will make a clay and wire sandwich.  Place the tail halves around the wire as shown in the upper left.  Use your paddle tool to blend the seams, being careful to touch only the seams.  Once blended press the tail into a gentle curve and maybe loop the tail or whatever you want to do with it.  I am not decorating the tail on this one.  Again, this has to do with the prorotyping process.  I want to see where ti touches the ear and how it feels to wear it before I add ridges or appliques that might feel unpleasant to the wearer.  So this little guy will have a pretty boring tail.  Now that you have all the sculpting done, it is time to bake!  I bake them in a toaster oven according to package direction.  I put some poly fil on a ceramic tile.  Lay the dragon on the tile and cover with a bit more poly-fil  This prevents both flat spots in the clay and is insurance against scorching.  This guy stayed in the oven about 20 minutes at temp.  Next up, a paint wash and some glitter!  After that we make the wings and finish the body.  I'll have the painting up in a day or two!  Technical difficulties have slowed this project down more than I would like :(

OK Dragon fans, sorry for the delay, I had some major photo quality issues on the first round of pictures and needed to re-shoot.  Such is life!  Today we will build the base frame for the ear cuff and get it prepared to have the polymer clay pieces sculpted onto it.  Tomorrow we will be sculpting the head and tail.  Tuesday comes making the shimmery wings and adding them to the frame, and we will wrap things up Wednesday with painting and finishing!

We begin with a piece of the flexible aluminum wire.  I like using the aluminum wire for projects like this this because it does not get brittle and break like regular metal wire does.  Since this is an ear cuff it will need to be bent and wound several times both during crafting and wearing.   It is also lighter than a similar guage of metal wire and will be a more comfortable wear.  

Wrap the end of the wire halfway around the pliers as shown above.  Then position the pliers about 3/4 of an inch below the 90 degree bend you made in the first step.  

Just like you did for the top loop, wind the tail halfway around the pliers.  You should end up with something like a zig-zag in the middle of your wire.  We will need to bend this into a C-shape eventually, and to accomplish this we will need to stabilize the center portion of the wire zig-zag.  Use your smaller gauge metal wire for this.  Cut a piece off of your spool about 9-12 inches long.  In the above picture I am holding a tiny tail of wire under my thumb while I wind the wire around the aluminum frame.

Once you have made about 4 loops around the left side of the frame, cross over the center of the zig-zag diagnonally about 3 times, then do 3 loops across the zig zag the other direction.  You should have a little X in the middle.  Finish up by doing about  loops around the right side of the frame.  Trim your ends and you are done with this step!  Once we add the wing frame there we'll pop a little glue dot in those ends to prevent any scratching.

This is why you needed that Sharpie.  It is a good size to accommodate the width of most ears.  Position the center of the cuff on the Sharpie and use your other hand to bend the wire around the sharpie.  It will look like a C-shape.  Armature wire like this is quite soft so it should be pretty easy to form the wire around the pen.  

You want to get a pretty close to perfect semi-circle to get the most stability against the ear.  This is difficult on the ends of the loops.  I use the pliers to grip just the ends and bend the wire just a little bit more.  You can use your finger, another set of pliers, or the round nosed pliers to complete the bend.  It should end up looking like the picuture above right.  

This is the fun part.  We need to estimate where the cuf is going to wrap around the ear.  I am planning to make mine with the head down toward the ear lobe and the tail at the top of my ear.  The cuff loop attaches to the outside of the ear midway from the lobe to the tip of the ear.  You can see above I poppet it on my ear and in a mirror wound the tail end of the way around the top edge of my ear.  

In the above left photo, I have trimmed the wire to a length allowing for about a 1 inch sculpted tail to trail down over the ear and for the head to rest below at my ear lobe.  This means the wire itself will not be that long as it will not stretch quite all the way to the tip of the clay sculpt.  I am estimating the wire will be about 1/3 of an inch into the sculpt and trimmed accordingly.  The little loops on the end are there to help to hold the clay onto the wire as we sculpt.  This is a trick I learned a long time ago to stabilize sculpting polymer over wire for doll making.  There are two reasons to wrap the aluminum wire in white florist tape.  First it makes the clay adhere to the frame better and keeps it from wobbling around as you work.  Second, aluminum wire will make ugly black marks on polymer clay.  It is a chemical reaction that can ruin a piece.  Wrapping as much of it in tape as possible prevents this.  Keep the tape taught as you wind it around.  

The end result of your wire armature building will look like this.  I have included the ruler for rough size and scale.  Tomorrow we'll sculpt a cute tail and a charming whimsical dragon head on the frame so get your clay tools ready!  Any questions?  Leave a comment!

Get out your craft supplies!  I am excited to announce that the dragons have gone very experimental and have decided we will be making a mixed media dragon ear cuff together during the festival!  First off you will need a basic polymer clay sculpting tool set.  Use what you are comfortable with, pictured below are the basic tools I regularly use.  You'll also need some jewelry tools that will work for a little bit of wire work, just wire cutters, pliers, and round nosed pliers.  You can get away without the round nosed ones if you need to. 

And now the fun part, all the shiny stuff!  You can make any color of dragon ear cuff you want, I chose blue.  Choose your clay and sparkly stuff colors to coordinate!  You will need:
*   Fancy Yarn 
*  Polymer Clay
*  Glitter 
*  Pearl-Ex pigment powders
The glitters and pearl-ex are optional.  They add some punch to your dragon but if you are on a budget they are not totally necessary to completing the piece.

You'll need two different kinds of wire for the frame of the ear cuff.  Aluminum armature of florist wire.  This is a very soft wire that will stand up to posing and moving again and again without getting brittle.  it is also of a larger diameter and will be more comfortable on your ear.  The other wire is just basic metal wire  The Sharpie I find is the perfect size for forming the cuff, any pen around the same size will do.  
* 18 gauge aluminum wire (pictured silver)
*  approximately 22 gauge craft wire (pictured gold on the spool)
​*  Fantasy Film 
*  White florist tape
*  E-6000 glue
*  Sharpie 

Finally, you will need a very dark color of acrylic paint and an optional coordinating color to highlight parts of your dragon.  The Fimo Decorating Gel will be used for wings.  You an also use Translucent Liquid Sculpey as it is more widely available.  I use the Fimo gel because it cures more clear.  Choose any water based glaze for your clear coat.  
* acrylic paint
*  liquid polymer clay 
​* water based clear glaze

That's it!  I am excited to share this idea with you.  I'll post the first step Friday April 24.  We'll see what comes of this experiment!

The Lady Dulcina Aelfwine, Her Majesty's Emissary to the Dragonlands, has sent word of unusual gatherings of dragons from every corner of the land.  Dragons from all corners of the Dragonlands are descending on the Southern Peninsula. They are decorating the trees with hanging lanterns, planting flowers along the forest floor, and making all manner of dragon delicacies.  It would seem Lady Aelfwine has stumbled into the annual Festival of Dragons.  I eagerly await more word from her about this rare glimpse into magical saurian culture.

We can celebrate the festival right along with our dragon friends right here in the Green World!  During the Festival you can expect to see new dragon artwork appearing!   A curated sample of the new art will appear in the newsletter exclusively April 26, 27, and 28 with the Early Goblin Discount.  More new work will be listed right here in the Elysium shop April 29 and 30 for just 2 days.  Every dragon adopted during the festival will arrive with a gift for you!

Throughout the Festival, right here in the blog will be an opportunity to work along with me in creating an exciting new dragon project.  A supplies list will be posted next week!

Finally, and for a limited time a Zazzle shop has arisen from the mist with fun things like buttons and shirts and guitar picks.  Most items will feature the above Festival of Dragons logo, but some other dragons might sneak in there before the shop closes down.  

And to cap things off, one lucky winner, who joins the facebook event page will be chosen at random at Festival's end to recieve a Festival of Dragon's gift.  The winner will be chosen via random number generator.  

Not a member of the newsletter?  You can join here:
​

So epoxy clay has eclipsed polymer clay as my absolute favorite medium to work with.  It hasn't been an easy relationship to build and I have made some unspeakably craptacular things with it.  However, once you get used to the process of working with it I think you will also place the polymer clay on the back burner.  There are two other posts in this series so far that introduce the pros and cons of epoxy clay and discusses the tools I use in creating the projects.  

I have tried a few brands, certainly not every brand.  I really can't recommend Aves ApoxieSculpt and Apoxie Clay enough.   The Apoxie Clay is the firmest of the clays I have tried and hence the most forgiving to work with.  Crystal Clay I found too soft to work with for sculpture but would make an excellent medium to add crystals and elements into a bezel, almost like a grout.  Magic Sculpt was acceptable, not as squishy as the Crystal Clay, more like the ApoxieSculpt.  I don't use it really but it is a good clay to play with for molds, etc.  For the kind of detailed work we will try today I recommend the Aves Apoxie Clay.

So here is what you are going to need to work on this very simple project.  The intent here is just to get you used to the texture, timing, and forming simple objects.  Make a few projects like this and then begin to branch out!

The strand of jasper beads is readily available at Michael's and Joann Fabric stores.  Don't want to buy those?  Use a shell, crystal, bottlecap, anything really.  There are some flatback crystals to incorporate as well.  The real lesson here comes from the powder pigment and the oil and acrylic paints.  Apoxie Clay does not come in the wide array of colors as the polymers, but you can really use different processes to get some great color effects.  Let's get our tools and Apoxie Clay and jump right in!

I am using white Apoxie Clay because we are going to color the clay itself.  As per the package instructions, mix equal parts of each container of clay.  Mix less than you think you need so you don;t have waste.  You can always mix more when you run out.  If you plan to use color in the clay, you may want to use one of those templates with various size circles to mix exactly the same amount of clay with the same amount of pigment each time.  

You can mix many kinds of pigments right into the Apoxie Clay.  You can mix in the pearl ex powders, chalk pastels, acrylics, and oil paints.  I have tried them all.  I Can say you need a lot of powder to make a good color and I found that the clay became crumbly to work with and made a piece that broke easily.  If you are making a very subtle color and don't need much of the powder pigments you can likely use them.  Acrylic paints can also be added and not really affect the strength and workability.  I did find that they did not mix well and remained a little streaky no matter how much mixing I did.  Perhaps the water base does not make very good friends with the epoxy compound.  But oil paints work wonderfully.  You only need a tiny amount.  If you measure your clay for each batch you can get consistent colors by measuring out the paint.  I use a toothpick and apply uniform dots to the clay.  As long as I make the same number of dots on the same amount of clay each time I end up with good consistency in color batches.  

So here is the epoxy clay with the oil paint blended in.  I have a pretty light but consistent color.  

SO the first 30 minutes of Apoxie Clay curing it is a very strong adhesive.  I like to get the base pieces on there at this stage, then wait 15 minutes or so and start with the details.  This way I get any stones or hanging loops on there while I have peak stickitude.  It bonds very well for the first 60-75 minutes too so don't freak out at minute 35.  After 75 minutes it is really starting to firm up and I'd not try to bond anything with it at that point.  You can see above I have simply rolled a ball shape out and flattened it into a pancake shape and popped it on my rock.  

Super helpful tip for placing your clay bits onto the rock:  this is when you really need that tub of vaseline.  The clay often likes sticking to your fingers and not the nice smooth rock.  With a teeny dab of petroleum jelly rubbed into your fingers you'll have a less frustrating time placing your elements onto the base piece.  

You can see above that I have added a flat backed glass gem into that disk and pressed it down.  The snake of clay rolled out next to it is for the hanging loop.  One thing epoxy clays don't do well is to stretch.  You can stretch polymer as you roll it out.  Epoxy will just tear.  So only roll the clay out, no pulling on it.  Not even as you place it onto the piece.  Epoxy is nudged, never tugged!

Take the snake shape you made and wind it around the glass gem and across the top any way you like.  You can see that the extra time I am taking to photograph and check that I have a good picture has accelerated the timetable on my sculpting.  Note the cracks in the epoxy from shaping.  You can use a paintbrush dipped in a tiny bit of water to smooth that out.  I'll be leaving it in the interests of finishing the tutorial!

Once you have the hanging loop how you want it, add some other crystals the same way you added the first glass element.  I have begun to roll out a thinner piece to wind around piece like a vine.  

I have added some vines wound around the hanging loop and formed into spirals.  You can work in small clay balls into the spaces between the vines and other elements.  I use the ball stylus tool to press them down and make a little cup shape.  Coat the tool in a thin layer of petroleum jelly so that the clay prefers to stick to the piece and not the tool!

Just to show you how to work in other color processes.  Before the clay gets too cured (within 60 minutes), you can brush on powder pigments like pearl-ex or chalk pastels and they will bond with the clay.  You can see I have brushed on some pearly blue.  I'll likely paint over much of it as I show you how to add acrylic paints to the clay in the next post.  For now I will wait for the piece to cure.  Epoxy can be painted while it is curing, since it does not shrink or deform as it cures.  It is just really difficult to do so since it may be slightly floppy.  

So part 2 will be posted later in the week and will be short!  We'll look at adding some acrylics and perhaps some alcohol inks to the piece.  I hope you have enjoyed this simple tutorial and that it gives you a fun, creative way to get used to working in epoxy.  

It's almost been a year since my last show. 10 years of making dolls and jewelry and doing shows. After FaerieCon last year I felt, as Bilbo Baggins once said, "thin, like butter scraped over too much bread". I've made maybe 3 things. I decided to retire almost every single design I made. I'm turning to new media and will focus on just a few projects which will be sold here.

The reasons are mysterious to me, but I decided to return to 2-D work. Found a really old sketch of some weird cow-woman and finally finished something!

of course I still love obsessing over tiny details....

She's all finished. Then I got kuh-ray-zay and detailed the matte and frame.

someday soon she'll show up for sale via my newsletter/shop and there may be prints. But she did kindle a spark of creative energy. Perhaps the dark passage is over....

Just because you are a chronological adult doesn't mean you should give up your toys!  Great toys spark the imagination, let you play, and increase creativity.  I think I was drawn to making art dolls as my primary medium because of my lifelong affinity for toys.  They are kind of grown up toys but they still connect me to enchantment.  

I've wanted to make plushie things for a long time, but the fear that they would not sell and my utter lack of any sewing skill were sizable barriers.  It took a complete collapse of the desire to make most of my popular things anymore to push me to try my hand.

So I bought a tutorial from Typing with Tea  And made my first ever felt thing.  Made about all the mistakes possible!

So with a little unwanted cat help from Kokopelli (he has a long way to go to be my dark craft apprentice), I made my own pattern to try.  I can happily say I know what a gusset is now!  

Made many fewer mistakes, biggest of which is the shape of the nose and placement of legs and embroidery detail, but my skills seem to be moving in the right direction!  My first pattern and my second plushie of cheap felt.  His little legs are poseable :)  

So now I am on to making another pattern for a furry thing!  

Been more than 6 months since I really made anything.  Striking a balance between being artsy and doing what you love and meeting business demands is difficult.  And I was training a new cat helper along the way!  I once heard Joyce Carol Oates speak and she talked about periods of time where she didn't write like the same way a farmer lets a field lie fallow.  Letting the ground rest for a season allows it to become a fertile place for growing.  

After FaerieCon, I didn't feel like making a single damn thing.  Caught between the pull of marketing advice, "make identifiable lines of things for brand identity" and the feeling that I really didn't particularly want to be making those very things.  I began to feel like I was working in my own little sweat shop.  And I made nothing at all.  

And so almost all of the things I used to make are retiring.  My Fairy Wing necklaces are the first on the chopping block.  The last few are at Into The Myst in Bethlehem, PA  Once they are gone, you'll be able to make your own, I am working on a tutorial for them!

Next on the chopping block are both my wing earrings and the steampunk flower earrings.  The last few of these are in my shop right now for a limited time!

I'll not be making any of my steampunk necklaces anymore either.....

Premiering next week at FaerieCon is a new line of ambient lights.  I am becoming increasingly drawn to the incorporation of light into mixed media sculptural work.  It adds a mystical dimension and layers of meaning not possible otherwise.

The smoothed edges of driftwood, the hard edges worn smooth along its journey down the Snake River.  Light has already burned its story on the wood, bleaching it almost white.  The quartz crystal grows out of the wood, no hint yet at what becomes at night.

A flick of the tiny switch and a mystical pink glow lights up the room.  Given the right circumstances our own inner glow can surprise us.  

The initial 4 pieces in the collection premiere at FaerieCon November 6, 2015.  They will go on sale to newsletter members after the show.  

Coming to FaerieCon, I'll be showing you how to incorporate beautiful flickering lights into your costumes and art projects!  No knowledge of Ohm's Law necessary ;).  I'll teach you just what you need to know to begin to develop your own soft circuits using LED lights and microprocessors.  

We'll be doing some sewing, but nothing an absolute beginner couldn't accomplish.  There will only be a few spots available for this class, but the project and some variations on it will be made into an ebook and an online course this winter.

I sure hope you can join me in Baltimore to add some mystical glow to an industrial looking hotel ball room!