Playing with Fimo

Anyone who comes here often will know that I'm always interested in different ways to make marks on fabric. I'm especially interested in stamping. So I wondered to myself, how hard would it be to make original stamps for textile work from Fimo? You know the stuff, like plasticine that you bake in the oven so it goes hard? It's a variety of polymer clay, made by EberhardFaber - the other main brand is Sculpey.

So last Fibrecircle day, in the absence of any sun for sunprinting,I thought I'd have a try. The answer is that it's incredibly easy to make a small stamp. I made this: The stamp is on the left, the ones on the right are from my friend Carol's mould that she happened to have with her and I'll probably paint them for use in some piece of art sometime.

I didn't worry about putting the clay through a pasta machine or anything sophisticated like that. I smooshed it flat with my hands, and marked out the design freehand with one of the plastic clay-working tools from my $2.99 set. Then I just scraped away the parts I didn't want to print and smoothed out the ridges so that they were reasonably level (by eye). Of course, it was really easy to work, much easier than carving, but I'm not sure I could make a large design this way. Then I baked the piece in my friend Prue's polymer clay oven, about a half hour at 130degC, basically until it was fairly hard. I'll show you how it works as a stamp, next time I have the fabric paints out.

My try at sunprinting is over on the Fibrecircle blog.