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 I took some undiluted TLS (Transparent Liquid Sculpey) and mixed some fabric paint into it to give some color. Then I drizzled it onto the surface of a mirror and baked it at 300 degrees fahrenheidt (149 celcius) for 15 minutes. |
 What this did was make the TLS very bubbly! It's a really neat effect, actually! For the life of me, I can't think of what else I would use it for, though!. |
 Using different colors of fabric paint, I mixed some blue and black to make this practice stain glass effect. Then I used just a touch of yellow and red fabric paints straight from the bottle onto the uncolored TLS in the sun for highlights. |
 The fabric paint once again seems to have made a lot of bubbles and colored the highlights in the clear TLS rather poorly. However, read on to the dipweeds and see how I may come to revise this theory. |
 I dipped some grass and some dried flowers into undiluted TLS. |
 The grass was drained and wiped against the lip of the TLS container and then pinched to get off as much of the excess TLS as possible. There's still a lot of TLS between the seeds in spite of my efforts. And bubbling. |
 I didn't drain this weed. I just dipped it and baked it with the grass at the same temperature as above. |
 This grass was dipped and not blotted before baking. |
 This is a window cling I made using diluted TLS and oil paint for tinting. (The black part of the body is Fimo Classic while the yellow is Sculpey III.) I found the diluted TLS to be easier to move around and to pour. |
 As a result of the dilute TLS in the butterfly experiment, I learned the thinner the TLS the better it handles. So I thinned some wayy-y-y down and then poured some of that onto this grass using an eyedropper. I let it drain a bit and then placed it on the surface of this baked bottle. Surprise! It came out very well and the grass was not delicate anymore. While it cannot be manhandled, it can be touched without damage. |
| What I learned with the above five experiments was undiluted TLS is bubbly. Thinned TLS gives you an easier medium to work with and really dilute TLS still gives strength to the Dipweeds you choose to preserve. As a conclusion of this, it seems possible that the fabric paints may NOT have been the ones to cause the first two experiments to be so bubbly. But I haven't followed up on that theory. You dilute the TLS until it's about the consistency of milk, letting the Dipweed drain as much as possible, blotting off any excess with facial tissue and then baking. | |
 This was a cyclamen flower in full bloom. I coated it with the very diluted TLS and baked it at 300 degrees fahrenheidt (149 celcius) for 20 minutes. It looks tremendously sad. |
 This is what it looked like when I turned it over so I could see the face of the flower. It's practically invisible behind the pooling of the TLS. |
 This is another cyclamen flower past the prime of full bloom. I covered this one with the very diluted TLS and baked it with the other cyclamen flower.This is the top of the flower. It, too, looks tremendously sad. |
 This is the bottom of the flower. It dried quite flat, but marred - not maintaining anything close to its original beauty. |
 This is a close up of the underside viewing the toasted petal and the pooled TLS at the center of the flower. |
What I learned from these two is that dried flowers are preferrable to fresh flowers. The water content in fresh flowers is too great for the TLS to hold up against. The steam from the moisture causes petals to expand or wilt leaving bubbles in the petals or wrinkles or charred spots. |
 Using the concept of NOT using fresh flowers, I coated a rose bud and baked it with the cyclamen flowers. This is what it came out like. |
 This is a view of the bottom of the bud. No matter how thin you dilute TLS, it's going to follow the law of gravity more faithfully than any other medium I've played with. It's more persistent than water!! |
 This is a picture of the rose bud on a bed of petals that had been pulled from it before I painted the bud with TLS. |
 This is a view from behind the rose. Note the bubbling in some of the petals |
 A close up of the bud. If you look carefully, you'll be able to see edges where the petals crisped and sections where the petals expanded. |
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| I happened to run across a plentiful supply (a long story, maybe another day!) of beautiful bottle flies. You know, the iridescent green, blue, copper and turquoise flies? They sparkle and shine so gloriously, I thought for sure I could do SOMEthing with them. So I gathered up a few of the dried carcasses, dipped them in TLS and baked them up (much to my wife's horror since I use her oven!). | |
 When pulled out of the oven, the two dipped flies (on the right) were not as shiny and are too small to sand and buff. Also too delicate, even though they can now be handled without fear of breaking. The fly on the left is unbaked for a comparison to how it should look. Also, there was a considerable pool of the thinned TLS underneath each fly. While the flies turned out less than optimum, I noticed the wings turned out beautifully! |
 The proclivity for pooling TLS, which follows the law of gravity with a vengeance, can actually be made to work FOR me. Here I've cobbled up a design for a wingrack with bug wings in mind. Two hershey kiss sized blobs of clay with very thin wire strung between them and a wire at the front of the "feet" should work nicely. Tiny beads of clay along the upper wires would keep the wing(s) from slipping sideways. Then, place the wing(s) with the arm section downward so the TLS can pool into a nice foundation that can be used to attach the wing to future projects! |
