More adventures with Pinata ink tinted flakes...

Hi Everyone,

This is a very long, wordy post.

Last week Karen taught a faux dichroic class at Guild. She did an amazing job and was very generous with her supplies. Since I knew she was going to be teaching the class it put me in the mood to play with materials that simulate dichroic glass. I also came out of the class thinking the liquid spread on clear materials (Papier, faux glass, whatever you want to call them) didn't quite do it for me.

If you've been reading my posts you know that I've been experimenting with Pinata tinted flakes. A couple of posts ago (or thereabouts) I mentioned that I had tried adding Future to the flakes to see if they would seal the ink. One of the happy accidents from that was that I had placed the Future'd flakes on a glass bevel that I had laying around from my stained glass days to dry the flakes on some other surface.

When I looked at the flakes from the glass side of the bevel I was impressed with the clarity the glass offered and how amazing the flakes looked through the glass. About a week before that I had been perusing the Michaels aisles (we have one less than five minutes away) trying to decide whether I wanted Ranger inks or not. In the same aisle they had microscope slides that I guess are really popular with scrapbookers.

After Karen's class I knew that I had to experiment further. Today I went and bought the scrapbook microscope slides. I still have my stained glass supplies and I decided to cut them into smaller rectangles so that I could make earrings with them. I'm rusty with my glass cutting and I went through a couple of slides trying to get the cuts right. I'm getting better though the glass is so small it doesn't leave room for error.

The separate pieces on the photos are approximately 1 inch by 1/2 inch.

Add Pinata ink and Future to the flakes, put on glass, let dry for a bit and then bake (letting it dry a bit eliminates the rapid formation of bubbles). I discovered it was very important to trim the flakes away from the edge of the glass after they were baked as it makes the framing look a bit choppy if bits of flake stick out.

The next challenge was to figure out how to surround the glass. Clay seemed to work. But, it's important to cut the flakes down so that they're not protruding from any of the edges. The reason that there's only one of the light blue ones is that I mucked up with the attempt to put the light blue one on the clay and when I went to peel the glass off the clay a lot of the flakes stayed on the clay.


The next set that I did was the green ones. The Pinata ink is a dark brown but it really seemed to pop the emerald green on the flakes. There's some really neat effects that happen with these and it's quite hypnotic to angle the beads from side to side.

One thing with the glass is that if the glass chips during cutting or if you've sanded the glass to make it chip a bit, then you'll see the little imperfections when you make the frame. It's the main reason that I textured the clay around the glass.

The last set I made today was with dark blue Pinata ink. I think I'm going to play with these a bit more - I have some acid etch that I'd like to use on the glass surface to add more interest. And, this is just the start. I have many other ideas that I'd like to do with this.


I still have to figure out what to do with the backs and I for sure will be making earrings out of these though I can also see making collages and pins.

I'll post more photos as I go.

Cheers,

Sandy