Central Oklahoma Polymer Clay Guild

A big congrats to Jane Linn for winning “Best Use of FIMO” in the AMACO Bottles of Hope Designers Challenge CHA-Summer 2007. The challenge winners were announced at this week’s Craft & Hobby Association show:

• Best Use of FIMO - Jane Linn
• Best Mixed Media - Karen Mitchell
• Best Expression of Hope - Lynne Ann Schwarzenberg
• People’s Choice Winner - Dee Dye
• Best Children’s Theme - Patricia Lynn Hillman
• Best of Show - Tommie Howell

If you haven’t seen Jane’s bottle, check it out here (#8). Her award-winning bottle (along with the rest of the top 25) will be auctioned off to benefit Gilda’s Club Chicago.

Our July meeting was in a new location — the Hobby Lobby in Norman — & I have to say I was impressed. The store is right off the interstate and easy to find. Not only did they give us a nice big spot to advertise in their front display case, but they were also extra-friendly — peeking in on our meeting a couple of times, asking if there was anything they could get for us. The longer meeting time was nice, too — allowing a much more leisurely pace for finishing & baking projects. We had more than enough room for the 7 people in attendance — and we think creative table arrangements would be possible for seating our larger groups. Those in attendance seemed happy with the new meeting location for now, though football season may create some challenges (more on that below).

Penni Jo & Sue did an excellent job teaching us the Explosion Accordion Folded Album. Not only did the group get instructions on folding the paper into an album — but we also learned about using Ultra Thick Embossing Powder (UTEE) with polymer clay to create a glass-like window. As usual, there were lots of different artistic interpretations of the project & plenty of creativity to go around. See a few photos of completed projects here. If you were at the meeting, we’d love to see photos of your project too — feel free to contact us if you need help adding your photo to our Flickr pool.

In the business portion of our meeting, we talked about the following items:

This month, at a new time & new location, Penni Jo Couch and Sue Kerr will be showing us how to make an Explosion Accordion Folded Album with a polymer clay cover.

Penni Jo and Sue were some of the very first members of the Central Oklahoma Polymer Clay Guild. Penni Jo creates beautiful designs — with works ranging from her molded designs for Sweetbrier Studio to her fantastic jewelry at her new Etsy shop. Sue has expertise in a variety of mediums — like quilting and rubber stamping — and uses that background to do very creative things with polymer clay.

Here are the meeting details:

• When: NEW TIME! Saturday, July 14, 2007, 2:00 - 5:00 p.m.
• Where: NEW PLACE! The new Hobby Lobby in Norman, 2417 W. Main, Norman, OK. (The classroom is up front, near the check stands. Go right after entering & it’s the first door on the right.)
• What to Bring:
  • Clay: Approx. 3 blocks for the 4” album
  • Wax Paper
  • Pattern paper: Can be regular paper or tracing paper
  • Texture sheets (or other texture makers like lace, fabric, etc.)
  • Tissue blade
  • Sharp Kraft knife
  • Pasta Machine or brayer
  • Clear UTEE (Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel)
  • Charm, tiny photo, or other item (to embed in UTEE)
  • Baking surface: Two tiles or two pieces of cardstock large enough on which to bake each cover. For the large cover you will need two approx. 8” square tiles or cardstock. For smaller cover, you will need at least two 6” tiles or cardstock
  • Ribbon or Cord: Matching Ribbon for ties: Small Album - 24” of 1/2” ribbon. Large album - 28” to 30”
  • Glue: Glue stick or PVA glue to glue the cardstock pages together; E-6000 or Weldbond glue for polymer clay
  • Album Pages: Three square sheets of double sided cardstock. Can be printed or plain paper. Use 8.5 by 8.5 inch cardstock for small 4 1/4” pages. Use 12 by 12 inch cardstock for large 6” pages. You may use three colors of paper or three sheets of one color for the pages

Penni Jo mentioned she has a large bottle of UTEE she can share. She also pointed out that Hobby Lobby has a 40% off coupon on their website this week — so if you need any of these supplies, come early & get ‘em at a discount.

Hope to see you there!

Update: Here’s instructions for the project — if you want to get started before-hand, Penni Jo suggests pre-conditioning your clay and/or doing the paper-folding: Explosion Album Instructions [PDF]