Friendly Plastic

 

Last weekend I attended a Friendly Plastic Course with  Liz Welch, which was run  in the beautiful Chepstow Castle.

                       

 

I don’t have very much experience with Friendly Plastic, but Liz is a wonderful teacher and the week-end was thoroughly enjoyable, meeting up with old friends Adrienne and Liz Gale and hopefully meeting new friends. We shared an evening meal on the Saturday, great fun and good food too!

The object of the course was to teach us how to work with Friendly Plastic in a 3 dimensional way. On the first day  Liz took us through lots of techniques, oozing, attaching friendly plastic to itself by using a soldering iron, making right angled sides, moulding and cutting , using metal leaf and colouring Friendly Plastic pellets with alcohol inks.

 

                    

          Small pieces made using the various techniques.

 

The next day we were already to make our dimensional piece. Adrienne and I found a couple of Acorn squash, different shapes and we decided that this is what we would use for our moulds.

I used the Friendly Plastic pellets , and when these were melted sufficiently , I used lace to try to create a design. This worked very well on the inside, but I had a lot of trouble getting any design onto the outside. I , with Liz’s guidance, tried to rectify this with a heat-gun, and by holding the whole thing in the hot water, but nothing worked, due to my inexperience I must add here lol. Eventually I gave in and reheated the whole thing. I moulded it around the squash, and pressed the outside firmly, folding and smoothing to  make some texture. I then coloured it with Alcohol Inks, lettuce, butterscotch and sail boat blue. It isn’t finished yet, but I am thinking about where to go next with it! Any suggestions gratefully received…… 

                             

Technorati Tags: Friendly Plastic,Liz Welch,Alcohol Inks,Friendly Plastic Pellets,oozing,soldering iron,foiling