London Polymer Clay Group

Hello everyone, Hope that you are all looking forward to our Clay Day on 24th November, the last one before Christmas, with an opportunity to try out some interesting SURFACE TREATMENTS.

We will be exploring a range of products available for use as surface treatments on polymer clay and experimenting with their use.

These will include Pan Pastels, Pearl Ex, Cosmic Shimmer, Derwent Inktense pastels, Ultrafine Glitter, Gold Leaf (sadly imitation), Nail Art Foils and maybe more.

These will be used along with stencils and texture tools.

We will also be looking at ways to seal these products - possibly Renaissance Wax  etc...….

Examples of the products will...

Our September clayday with Clare Mcknight was, as always, a jolly and convivial gathering.
Clare demonstrated her Christmas Heart tree decorations and tea light holders.

It was so lovely to see the innovative ideas members brought to their creations. That is always the
joy of claydays – the originality of the response to the work demonstrated. So we had everything
from traditional Christmas to very subtle designs and utter bling! All were fabulous. Thank you Clare
for your friendly demo plus delicious recipe.

The Show and Tell table also held some treats for us all so please take a look at Bridget’s photos.
It was very difficult to have to inform y...

September's clay day will help you get ready for Christmas!

 Clare McKnight will be sharing two Christmassy options for our September clay day.  Pretty tea light holders and heart tree decorations.  You can choose to do one, or both.

Tea lights holder will be formed using translucent clay over a glass jar, with a pierced pattern, allowing the light to shine through the tiny holes.  Clare uses empty 200g Nutella glass jars,  (See her Nutella Brownie recipe below to use up the contents).

Heart are made using scrap clay.  These make attractive Christmas tree decorations. with a subtle sheen finish.  Clare will also show a very simple way t...

Clay Day 28th July  

We had a super day on Sunday learning all about clasps, closures, toggles, hooks – you name it - with all the demos by our lovely members.

Ann showed us how to create intricate wire clasps (which she claimed were quite easy really), Ruth showed a selection of simple link closures and toggles and even I managed to finish one of these!

Following this Theresa’s embedded magnets were a hit, with one new member, who does not have pierced ears, discovering that the magnets were strong enough to hold earrings together through her ear lobe. Who knew? Finally, Jude demonstrated how to make wire pins for a large “statement” brooch.

(See...

July's clay day is all about clasps, hooks and toggles​

 A lovely matching closure can make all the difference to a necklace or bracelet.  A polymer toggle, a bead clasp with embedded magnets a handmade wire hook, bail or link is just what you need for a perfect finish.  At our July clay day we will have a series of short demos of different ways to make your own clasps, hooks and toggles, and Ann will also demonstrate how to make best use of her products.

The Show and Tell table will have this as a theme, and we hope everyone will bring pieces with elegant closures they want to show off, pieces where the do-up raised a problem they’d like t...

Sunday 26th May clay day was our regular ‘focus on colour’ session, with Jude demonstrating three different options for people to work on their understanding of colour and colour mixing in polymer clay.

The three exercises were:

• instinctual colour mixing – a reliable way to get the colour “recipe” of any colour you want.

• pivot tiles – an exercise in seeing how colours shift when colour-wheel neighbours are added in controlled quantities, and then how they shift again when white, grey or black are added.

• mosaics – Jude brought along some really beautiful mosaic beads with colour shifting “tiles” running around them – a very effective tec...

On May 26th we will have our third colour special. As before Jude Parker will be demonstrating three activities each prompting you to explore an aspect of colour. You can choose one of these activities or, if you'd prefer to follow a worksheet from an earlier activity, that is fine.

We will be making mosaic beads to explore the effect of colour placement, continuing to develop our instinctive colour mixing and revisiting pivot beads.

To get the most out of the day you should bring:

• Our usual clay day kit

• A range of polymer clay colours, including the primaries (blue, yellow and magenta) plus black, white and scrap

• A small cookie cutter f...

Fantastic Clay Day on Sunday 27th January, with Bridget Derc giving us a very broad ranging demo - turning a large cane into a complex table top or large mandala.

We were each given 30+ slices of a “master cane” and shown in great and careful detail how to use protractor and graph paper in order to trim the slices to fit a square, hexagonal and circular layout.

We all had great fun trimming and laying out and were impressed with how many different beautiful tiles we managed to make between us, with every single one different despite all using the same source cane.

Brilliant demo with loads of useful learning for everyone - thanks Bridget!