Screaming Ba Bird

No, really, check it out.  It's screaming.  I blame the Romans. 

Today's experimentation

I've been playing with polymer clay some more for an already late birthday gift. Awesome.

Anyway, this lovely blurry photograph with the glare from my desk lamp shows some of the pieces prior to baking. I'll try for better photos post baking.

I really love the marbleing you can pull off with the clay. A whole lot. I need to get better at piercing round beads though. My clever plan to use bamboo skewers is not working as well as I'd like - I don't want holes that big/beads big enough to have holes that big in them.

Must re-plot.

I do have to say, though, I am loving my new clay blade. The shape cutters I have are cool, but the blade is super extra awesome.

Once this project is done I have some archaeologically themed stuff in mind.

Oh, and Ravelympics starting Friday night. Tee hee.

In other news, I think Oreo frightened someone away today. I was in the back of the apartment and am fairly certain I heard someone open our screen door. Usually this is the mail arriving. This time it wasn't. Oreo barked most ferociously and for much longer than usual with the mail person. And it wasn't the mail because it arrived several hours later. Much praise for my ferocious protector.

Something finished!

One of my very best friends left for a 6-week season in Egypt today. I was feeling too badly to see her off, but Tom took her to the airport and presented her with this gift.

She's a fellow Egyptologist and her research interests include mudbrick, palaces, and the reign of Amenhotep III and the Amarna Period. Soooo, I thought I'd make her a pendant with a reproduction of a stamp frequently used on mudbricks from the reign of Amenhotep III.

Mud bricks were often stamped with the names of the people or institution responsible for the construction of which they were a part. In this instance, I chose a stamp with the prenomen of Amenhotep III (Neb-maat-re), which is on the right and his Great Royal Wife, Tiye (on the left). This particular stamp was used on mudbricks used to construct a portion of the royal palace of Amenhotep III near modern Luxor (Malqata).

I decided to do an imitation of faience instead of a miniature mud-brick. I thought it would be a bit more attractive as well as easier to pull off.

So, I carved a rubber block with the stamp. Then rolled out some

polymer clay, mixed it to the faience color I wanted, and stamped it.

The impression was not fantastic as you can see in the top photo.

Stamping into clay is far less forgiving than stamping with ink. The

three-dimensional nature of the impression catches all the edges that

I didn't carve cleanly, the variation in depth of carving, etc. But, I

think it still worked reasonably well.

After baking I cleaned some edges up with my lino carving tools and

some sanding.

I did a light wash of paint to catch some of the edges and give it more

of an faience appearance and then I used some satin-finish glaze, which

you can see in the last two photos.

I'm giving some thought to producing more pieces like this for sale.

Any thoughts? Requests?

I figure I may as well try to combine my training as an Egyptologist

with my fiddling around with clay and see what comes of it.