This is probably the most challenging part of this project. You must think up your message. For an 8" x 10" mat and 1" tiles, you will want a saying with 15 letters (not counting spaces). This will give you 5 rows of three letters each.
Getting Started:
Basic white Sculpey comes out of the package soft and needs very little conditioning. Sometimes, it is enough just to roll the clay slab through the pasta machine once or twice. We roll the slab through the widest setting and end up with a piece of clay about twice as long as the original and about 1/16" thick. This would be a good thickness for tiny tiles for the front of a card, but for our framed piece, we want the tiles thicker, so we fold this piece in two. As shown in the second picture.
If you do not have a pasta machine, you can roll out the clay with a roller. Your aim is to get an even thickness throughout the piece. It helps to use parallel “rails” made of strips of wood of matching thickness. The clay goes between the strips and the roller rests on top of them as it rolls. This method should give you a strip of clay of uniform thickness.
Work Surface
We like to work on a plastic tray which we coat with cornstarch baby powder by spreading the powder around with a fingernail brush. The cornstarch acts as a release so the clay does not stick to anything - we also use it to dust our stamps and tools as we work. Our tray is shown in the picture below.
Use a square wood mount or other square wooden block to impress the clay enough to define the four edges of the block. These lines will be your trim guide so that your tiles will end up the same size and your letters will be centered. The block should be a little larger than your letters. We used a 1" square. You may want to rock the mount slightly in both directions to make sure the edges make an impression.
We used a great, deep set of letters we got at Michael’s in the section where they sell kits to make paving stones for the garden. They are plastic, have a letter on either side and make a nice deep impression. the price for the set was reasonable - somewhere between $5-$7.
Any alphabet stamp set will do, but the more formal, uniform letters work best.
Try to make your impressions close to the same depth on each tile.
Use a polymer clay blade or a straight razor blade to cut along the outline made by your wood square.
It is important to hold the blade perpendicular to the tray so the side cuts are straight up and down. This will make your tiles line up better in the finished piece. scraping your blade in the cornstarch powder before each cut will make for clean cuts.
Place your cut tiles on a piece of cardboard.
Applying High Desert PolyGlaze is a “piece of cake” (as opposed to “easy as pie” - I never thought making a pie was very easy!) But, it is sloppy, so work on a styrofoam plate or on waxed paper (something the tile won’t stick to).
First, shake your glaze, and then pour a little in a small cup, or if mixing a color, do it right in the cup.
Wet a fat brush and dip it in the glaze without removing much of the water. “Slop” the glaze on the face of the tile, making sure to get it to settle into the depressed letters. Run the brush around the tile edges to glaze them.
Add more water to smooth things out and add more glaze to add more color until you get a look you like. If you can’t get satisfied, rinse the tile under running water and start over. As long as the glaze is wet, it will wash right off. Once the glaze is dry though, it will not need to be sealed because it will be permanent and waterproof.
Poke at any air bubbles with the tip of the brush to break them. If some still remain, pick up the tile and drop it from an inch or so above the surface. That should get rid of them.
Set your tiles aside to air dry. Using a heat tool or hair dryer to hurry the drying along is not recommended. A glaze, by definition, is meant to suspend pigment in a transparent, even layer over a surface. A hair dryer or heat tool will move the pigment around during the drying process and interfer with the evenness of the color.
Mix equal parts of Blue Corn Mist and Morning Mauve to get a nice violet. Mix equal parts of that violet and Adobe Dust to get our creamy taupe. This color looks great with all of the cream colored mats.
Remove any leftover cornstarch powder from the back of your tiles. Arrange the tiles in the correct order within the window of your “shadow mat” (see page 2 of this article). Make 5 rows of 3 tiles each. We tried to leave a 1/8" space between each tile and about 1" between the tiles and the edges of the window. This is the moment when you will discover just how uniform you made your tiles! (not!) Luckily, a little imperfection helps enhance the “old Roman” feel of this piece.
Once the tiles are lined up as perfectly as possible, pick them up one at a time, put a tiny blob of Duco Cement on the back (no bigger than a split pea), and carefully place them back where they were. You will have a few moments of working time with this cement, so move the tile in a tiny circular motion to spread the glue, and then make sure it is realigned in its row. The entire piece should lie flat on its back for at least 30 minutes while the glue sets.
Then, you can pick it up and look at it, think how cool it is and start figuring out the sayings for all those gifts you will make for next Christmas!
