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What Have You Done With Your Extruder Disks Lately?
In today’s photo I’m holding up a commonly used disc that comes with most Makins Extruder Guns. It is typically used for making spaghetti strands or polymer clay hair. But these long skinny clay strands can be used in many different ways. Here are 6 creative ideas for you to incorporate them into your polymer clay projects:
1) Put multiple colors in the barrel of the extruder and make a pile of clay snakes that can be coiled around in spirals and swirls to get a beautiful filigree look.
2) Bake these colorful snakes and cut them into short little lengths (1/4″ or less). You can then stick these pieces end first into a slab of raw clay to create a ‘pointillist’ picture.
3) Embed short lengths of baked snakes along their sides and create a miniature polymer clay mosaic.
4) How about gathering together several raw clay snakes and use them as a background for a polymer clay cane.
5) Wrap a raw clay strand around a core bead made with scrap clay, for an interesting look.
6) Wind up a strand of raw clay into a tiny nest to work into a design for making some cool bird pendant jewelry.
What Else? Put your creative thinking cap on and let’s get those ideas flowing. Not just for the commonly used polymer clay hair or spaghetti strand disc… but for all of the various extruder die cut shapes. There are so many of them!
PS: If you are Following Me On Twitter, you may have noticed that I am now tweeting about some of the most helpful comment tips you all are posting here at the blog. It feels really great to be able to give you guys recognition. Several of you have already received some Twitter Glory and probably don’t even know it yet :) … by the way, signing up on Twitter is quick and easy. Just follow this link to get started: http://twitter.com/PolymerClayTips
We just found your website on Twitter. We just wanted to say what a wonderful informative website you have for all Polymer clay artists. Keep up the great work.
All the Best
Lianne & Paul
Makes me laugh thinking about that foot pushing model I have somewhere. Makin sure makes it easier. Was my first treat when I started reading this site.
Fan of “the hair” since my first Play Do birthday gift way back when.
Used Kato clay and had no trouble at all getting usable strands. Very pretty used making a mokume gane cane/cube. Just rolled the strands in gold leaf then cut 1 inch slices and stood them on end to make the first block, then poked away with a pen cap, and filled the holes with more strands. The slices were amazing.
Next time, going to try to add the gold leaf into the extrusion so it disperses within the strand.
Just too much fun to have as an adult, I swear.
Jocelyn – I can’t quite picture what you are doing with mokume gane cane/cube but it sounds fun. I love mokume gane and the different ways to do it. Going to try what I think you are doing.
Cindy – What is pointillist?
Cindy: Looking at your tweets I am now convinced you don’t sleep. As you know, I used the small spaghetti to make frames for my charms. I have also used them to wrap around a base bead and make some “out of this world” beads, because they look like little space thingys. Love the variety of colors idea and smooshing into a cane. Can’t wait to see what others come up with.
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@ Freda
Here you go…and this happened by accident! Best of luck! It was fun!!
First took the hair strands as they came off the tube, about a 6 inch strand, and laid them straight. Gently rolled them into a spiral strand and rolled them in leftover gold leaf flakes. Then cut them into one inch lengths and stood them on end into a cube pattern. Mushed it a little to make it a good compact slice-able form.
Stuck a pen cap into it to make random depth impressions. Filled those impressions with more twisted strands of hair clay. Packed it down well, put it in the fridge for about an hour, then sliced away with both a Kato straight blade, then tried slices with a ripple blade.
Outstanding patterns. Almost like an Impressionist painting type dots effect, surrounded by bursts of lights caused by the gold flakes. Cannot wait to try it adding metal leaf inside the extruder so the gold in dispersed within each strand.
I’ve been fortunate to borrow a digital camera from a friend for an upcoming trip, so will try and get a few pictures to share.
Wish we had a gallery, where right after the blog or lesson, you could post pics of your results. Would be fascinating and very inspiring to see the work so many of you do.
Hope you enjoy it Freda!
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Thanks Jocelyn for explaining further. Got the picture. Can’t wait to try it. I agree with the gallery idea. That would be awesome.
Freda
Laurel, just linked to your page. I love your work. Look forward to wearing some of it soon too. Birthday money!
Uh oh. Freda just went to your page. OMG! I love your work too! I am stopping now. It’s such a treat to be able to do this here!
Jocelyn, you are so sweet. Thank you for the compliment. I want to see what you and Freda did here. It sounds cool but I don’t quite get it all. I definately need pictures. LOL
@Lianne&Paul: Thanks! Glad to see you here. Love your polymer clay ornaments. Really neat!
@Jocelyn: Sounds like a cool idea to add the gold leaf to the clay in the extruder. Bet that would look great! I loved playdoh hair thing too. More as a kid than a parent though since it’s a pain to clean up after!
@Freda: Pointillist is a style of painting done completely in dots. You can get a similar look in using clay logs since each log’s end view is a dot.
@Laurel: You deserved the compliment! I too would like to see pictures of the technique Jocelyn is talking about. Sounds cool!
I promise I will post some pics, though I am not sure I know what code to use to do it.
Girlfriend kindly extended the use of her digital camera to me for the summer, so I’ll have lots of pics of stuff I’ve tried to do as Cindy taught me, lol.
Just made another one of those mokume gane canes the other nite, using lots of translucent, and lots of random coordinating color slices to load the chamber. Then combined strands until I had a 2 inch diameter circle of strands. Once rolling that in flakes, added a wrap of translucent, more flakes, then put them together to form the base mokume gane cane as I described about.
Now I realize why I love the pattern so much, the slices remind me of Vincent Van Gogh’s work. Those sparkly spiral slices look very much like the techniques he used in many of his paintings. Check out posters of his work found at postercheckout.com.
Hmmm, I can see some fabric murals in my future…..
Just email your bead pictures to me Jocelyn and then Doug will figure out where to post them. Your beads sound wonderful… can’t wait to see them!
Can’t wait to see Jocelyn’s pics.
I can’t wait to see Jocelyn’s pics too. I just got some metal leaf at Michaels today…
@ Lisa and Freda
Bless you girls, I appreciate the inquiry. I feel I must clarify.
Cindy Lietz is an artist. Most of you are artists. I am NOT. I am a “how to do it better junkie,” LOL!
Don’t want to raise anyone’s expectations, plus with the MS now flaring in my hands, regular finishes are tough. It hurts to hold anything somedays.
So promise you all will be kind and gentle.
Things are moving right along here in the air conditioning. No trip, fine. No beach, K. Hit walmart.com on a quick fix and scored a Lexmark X5070 fax/copier/scanner/printer for less than $55.00, free shipping. There is a higher power and sometimes it is good.
Friend gave me the digital camera, just bought a neighbor’s extra cellie….just need to figure out the programs.
Bear with me, I will get it together and share. P-r-o-m-i-s-e!
@Jocelyn: Hi Jocelyn, did you ever send in pics of this MG technique made from extruder hair and gold flakes? You did P.r.o.m.i.s.e. — LOL! I know it’s been a long time, though. I just happened upon this article and thought I’d ask. Now that Cindy & Doug post pics all the time within articles, I thought it’d give it a try at least!
Hi Cindy,
I am trying to make hair for a beautiful face cameo I made (clay), I have an extruder, but it doesn’t work or I’m doing something wrong.
I just can not get more than a few mm pushed out and then I have a real struggle to try to get a longer piece out.
Should I be using a certain technique? Mine is a Sculpey clay extruder.
I don’t want to ruin this beautiful cameo! Thank you for all your help and your time!
Mavis
You’re probably not doing anything wrong Mavis… those Sculpey extruders you push with your thumb are really hard to use. I recommend using the Makins Extruder. Click the link by my name to read an article about it.
I second that Phaedrakat. Just reading it over made me want to try it. Our guild is having demos of different techniques for m.g. this month. If I had gotten back to this sooner, I would have demo’d it (if it worked for me)