Month: November 2020

Polymer Clay Mold Issues

On By Michel McDonaldIn craftsLeave a comment

Earlier this year, a friend dropped off 4 bags full of polymer clay, tools, books and magazines and asked for 1 thing in return, to make her some windchimes.

I haven’t really messed with it because it was just before summer, and the clay was already too hard to work with because it was crumbly and I figured I would just watch some videos before playing with it. Also, I figured it would be more difficult to work with in the heat of the summer.

Well, I finally started playing with it and I had to buy a few new tools to help. Like clay softener and a pizza stone, but I also bought all these Makin’s molds from Etsy. The fruit mold came with the Makin’s clay conditioner, so I just bought the rest of the molds.

Getting to the point now lol. I tried using these molds, and the clay wouldn’t release. I went to YouTube for a tutorial and the makers of these molds sell their own clay that releases from these molds easier than the Sculpey clay that I’ve been using.

I don’t remember if I had read this in a help section, or if I heard it in a video, but one of the things I was told would work is to put corn starch on the mold, then press the clay in and then pull it out. Well, of course that didn’t work for me. Just now I wondered if I dipped the clay directly into the corn starch, would it release easier? And it did. It worked.

This isn’t a color you can buy, that I know of, this is a color that I made by blending a lot of different colors of scrap clay together to use as scrap to experiment with things like trying to figure out how to get the clay to release from the molds. You can probably see a little bit of corn starch still, but I used a paint brush to brush off the remaining corn starch. When I do use the clay to make something like this, of course I will brush it off, then after it is baked, I will brush some gloss glaze on it to make it shiny.

These things from this mold are thin enough that I can use them when I make cards with my Cricut. That was the main motivation for buying all of these molds, so I can use them somehow with papercraft. And now that I have finally figured out the best way to get them to release, I will finally be able to make embellishments to help my cards win accolades from friends and family. Not really, but it could happen.

New President

On By Michel McDonaldIn PoliticalLeave a comment

I have lived for 50 years, and in those 50 years we’ve had 9 Presidents When I was born it was Richard Nixon, then Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and then Donald Trump.

In those 50 years I’ve never experienced such a divisive President of the United States. I never heard of any presidents calling people names and talking dirty about women or telling someone in his audience to beat someone up and he would pay for their legal council. Well, until Donald Trump came to be President.

These past 4 years have been rough on me because I have lived through 50 years of bullying from my family, school, jobs and just the rando ass hat homophobe calling me fag or this one guy called me Big Gay Al. Hearing the constant attack on citizens was triggering for me and caused me to have so much anxiety, that I quite literally thought about suicide on many occasions because I just didn’t think it was ever going to end. I don’t have to listen to it, but it’s always there on TV and on social media.

It’s. Always. There.

No one can know how horrifying it is to have to listen to all the bullies who have ever attacked you in your entire life all rolled up into one guy who is leading our country, unless they have been where I have been. And all those people who simply ignored his hatred because “He speaks his mind” and “He didn’t really mean what he said” are people who obviously never experienced the pain that I have experienced, and if they did, well, bless your heart.

Joe Biden’s victory speech was so nice to hear because he wasn’t attacking anyone. If Trump were giving his victory speech, he would be attacking Joe Biden and the crowd would be chanting “LOCK HIM UP! LOCK HIM UP!” It’s so odd hearing someone who is going to be our president not calling someone else nasty names. What’s more odd is that it’s suddenly an odd feeling. That’s not normal. I feel like we all finally got out of a toxic relationship and we can all breath a sigh of relief that our new relationship isn’t with an asshole.

I don’t care if you are a Republican or a Democrat, if the president is attacking citizens in his speeches, then he is not being presidential. Neither Bush’s ever constantly attacked any democrats in their speeches that I can remember, neither did Ronald Reagan. There was no anxiety from having to hear them speak because they spoke presidentially. So why is it that Donald Trump feels it ok to speak horribly about everyone who isn’t him in every speech? During his campaigning, all he did was attack democrats. That was his campaign? And people voted for that?

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are a life saver, for me anyway. I am just so happy that we will have a president who will be speaking like a President and he is someone I will proudly call my President. Let’s hope for a boring 4 years with a no bully President.