Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Sockeye Salmon Magnets at the Salmon Festival

We made our first visit out to the Salmon Festival since it started to replenish some stock that sold.  The artisan market is even more impressive this year with a wide range of salmon themed artwork from other local artists.  The market is in a tent this year which provides plenty of room for the large amount of tourists passing through.



This is Connie who is heading up the market and has done a terrific job so far with everything being so well organized.


We made more sockeye salmon magnets again this year in both the sculpted technique as well as our "stylized" ones.



These were created from texture sheets we made from clay using my original drawing.  They are  flexible so we can run them through our pasta machine to make a deep impression.  Mica powders are then applied to give the shimmering color.


If magnets are baked in the clay they can lose their strength so they need to be glued in after baking.  To increase the strength of the magnet as well as maintaining a strong hold so it won't come out, we embedded a metal washer (A) in the back.  Another layer of clay was placed over top with a large enough space to glue the magnet in after the pieces are baked.  In this case we found that an apoxy clay worked really well.


2 comments:

Carla said...

I'm glad you two are so successful! Does Donna have the stitch markers? I just finished a little hat and used three of your buttons on it. So cute! Blog post tomorrow

2 Good Claymates said...

Hi Carla, Unfortunately Donna doesn't have the stitch markers yet but she will have them along with the little mini bloom buttons in a couple of weeks. She should be up to date with all our new stuff by then. Will be nice to be finally caught up.

Looking forward to seeing your finished hat! I love the colors you were using!