Creativity in Focus

Scoring Techniques for Basic Glass Bottle Fusing with Jodi McRaney Rusho

Posted on by Curious Mondo

“If you do a lot of bottles and you do have one of the little contraptions that,
does the score for you, you might want to consider a tiny propane torch,
So we’re going to put that candle flame on or close to this score, and I can, I can kind of see it through the bottle. So I know where that is. And if you listen very carefully, you can hear this little tink. So basically now you’re heating up where you scored.”

Learn more about the course here:
https://www.curiousmondo.com/basic-bottle-glass-fusing-course

Creativity in Focus

Teaching Techniques For Beginning Basket Weaving with Cheryl Dixon

Posted on by Curious Mondo

“So you’ve got your length. So what you do is you find the good side of your read. Of course, you need to take it under, you can start anywhere. You take it under so that this is sticking out on the outside of the basket. Then my piece of round red, I’ve put the ants together and I’ve put it together like a hair, a pen, you know how a hairpin has that, that looped look that I’m going to hook it over this. This is the hardest part of this technique is getting it started. So I hooked it over there. I’m not going to push this down just yet, so you can really see the technique. So we’re going to have X’s on the outside of every other one. So I’m just going to take this. It doesn’t matter which one you take first, as long as you’re consistent with it. So this I take down this one up, so I make this X.”

Learn more about the course here: https://www.curiousmondo.com/beginning-basket-weaving-course

Creativity in Focus

Tracing Stencils for Dimensional Paper Clay Art with Rogene Mañas

Posted on by Curious Mondo

“So the first thing I’m going to do on my nice smooth piece of clay is I’m going to just put this off to the side here and now I’m going to trace around that actual actually that’s remind me that that’s upside down to you. So turn it around here. If I put it right in the middle of the clay, then I, then I’ve, you know, have to roll it out again. And I want to keep all that because I have all these other leaves and stems I’m going to put on there. So I’m just going to take a ballpoint pen and go over my bird with a ballpoint pen. In terms of pressure. It’s the same pressure as if you were riding on it. You’re writing on a paper, but you also, you know, you can poke through it. So, and I probably will do that a couple of times. “

Learn more about the course here:
https://www.curiousmondo.com/dimensional-art-paper-clay-course

Creativity in Focus

Plaster of Paris Molds & Basic Glass Bottle Fusing with Jodi Mcraney Rusho

Posted on by Curious Mondo

For plaster of paris, we use two parts plaster to one part water. We’ll just do it that way. Let’s just regular plastic. Regular plaster paris. You can get at a home Depo or a hardware store or a craft store. Two parts class, or one day. Part water, two parts plaster, one part water. By volume. Get it in the mold before it sets up too much.

Learn more about the course here:
https://www.curiousmondo.com/basic-bottle-glass-fusing-course

Creativity in Focus

Making Clay Leaves for a Dragonfly Notebook Cover with Andrea Corpodean

Posted on by Curious Mondo

“What we’re going to do is take one of the leaves and just place it on the clay. Actually, you know what, I’m going to place all of them right now.
And I’m going to apply some pressure to the paper. No idea why, but lately my lifts have become kind of crunchy. I’m afraid that when I tried to take them off the clay, they might break now. I really hope it will happen.
But, I know it might, so I’m going to apply, some pressure on the entire leaf and then I will just take them off the clay.”

Learn more about the course here:
https://www.curiousmondo.com/dragonfly-notebook-cover-course

Creativity in Focus

Teaching Techniques for Beginning Basket Weaving with Cheryl Dixon

Posted on by Curious Mondo

We’re playing leap frog. So you have two friends and yourself, and you’re playing leapfrog where you jump over the people in front of you. Typically, you can only play with two people where you leap over, but we’re going to pretend like you’ve got really long legs. So I’m going to leap over these two and under this one. Okay. Now I like to teach with different explanations, different analogies, so that if you didn’t understand that you can understand a different way. So we’re going to play the train game. So we have a train here and this one is the engine. This middle one is the dining car, and this one is the caboose. So poor caboose always wants to be the big engine because the engine gets the most attention. So he’s going to jump over the dining car and that one in there he is. He’s now the engine.

Learn more about the course here: https://www.curiousmondo.com/beginning-basket-weaving-course

Creativity in Focus

Rolling Clay For Dimensional Paper Clay Art with Rogene Manas

Posted on by Curious Mondo

To get started here, we’re going to just make a simple flour. And when you roll the clay out, it’s really important to always lift it first, before you start doing anything, because it’s so sticky that it’s going to want to stick to this plastic piece. And if you start cutting things out and you haven’t lifted the clay, they’re going to be stuck. So you want to always pull the clay away from the plastic. I’m just going to use a little, a little box top here to cut a circle, and I’m going to make a little flower shape out of this circle, going to actually do two. I’m going to take the top of, of a glue stick, which just happens to be about the right size for a smaller circle. It’s going to go inside. So there we have these two little pieces.

Learn more about this course here:
https://www.curiousmondo.com/dimensional-art-paper-clay-course

Creativity in Focus

Firing Schedules for Basic Bottle Glass Fusing

Posted on by Curious Mondo

I used two firing schedules. I used a slump schedule. And a slump schedule is hot enough to take a bottle from this to this. So that is, it’s hard enough to bend the glass based on gravity and heat.
It’s going to get a little, a little squishy and gravity is going to pull it flat,
But not hot enough to go all the way flat. So let me show you, this is a fuse schedule and this is the other one I use frequently. Okay. So that same bottle, that’s the difference between a slump and a fuse. And interestingly enough, that is only 150 degrees difference. So a lot of stuff is happening in that 150 degrees.

Learn more about the course here:
https://www.curiousmondo.com/basic-bottle-glass-fusing-course