HOME | DD

Description
I recently visited ~Dragonfeelers , and we went to the British Museum in London. In their (big) section on China, they had several pieces -- usually plates -- that were covered in several layers of different colours of lacquer, and then carved/engraved to make neat patterns, or even whole scenes. The carvings took advantage of the different colours of lacquer, whether just in the designs, or for different colours in the scenes. They were very intricate.

I found it inordinately fascinating, and decided to experiment with the idea. This is two sheets of Fimo Soft that were pressed together and then cured, and then "carved" by the knife at left. I say "carved" in quotes because, really, I basically just hacked away at the thing. d: The knife doesn't make for very smooth cuts, so if I were to continue experimenting with this sort of thing, I'd probably want to get real honest-to-goodness carving tools, if I only knew what they were. (At the very least, a little rasp or file.) I'm not sure that would help, though; perhaps you can't tell in this photo, but there seem to be some impurities or inconsistencies in the Fimo itself. Perhaps I need to knead and work it out more, to make it more uniform.

I thought I rolled the sheets pretty thin, but it still seemed to take a lot of cutting to get down through the pink and into the green. You can see, in the cuts that went deep enough, what I mean about the "carving" ending up more like hacking and scraping at the stuff.

Also, the Fimo doesn't seem to stick to itself very well. The rightmost rectangle cut out of the pink was actually just two straight cuts, and then I was able to pry apart the Fimo and break off the rectangle of pink. (That technique may make for an interesting sort of art in its own right.) Not visible in this picture is a bit where I was actually able to pry the green away from the pink using just my fingernails. It was fairly soft, not too brittle.

When I made this, I also made a similar disc out of two different colours of Fimo Classic, so I could compare their consistencies with Fimo Soft. I'll try that one another night though, I'm a bit tired now.

So yeah. I'm not sure if I'll do something like this again, since the results are less than wonderful. But it was interesting to experiment.

Description
I recently visited ~Dragonfeelers , and we went to the British Museum in London. In their (big) section on China, they had several pieces -- usually plates -- that were covered in several layers of different colours of lacquer, and then carved/engraved to make neat patterns, or even whole scenes. The carvings took advantage of the different colours of lacquer, whether just in the designs, or for different colours in the scenes. They were very intricate.

I found it inordinately fascinating, and decided to experiment with the idea. This is two sheets of Fimo Soft that were pressed together and then cured, and then "carved" by the knife at left. I say "carved" in quotes because, really, I basically just hacked away at the thing. d: The knife doesn't make for very smooth cuts, so if I were to continue experimenting with this sort of thing, I'd probably want to get real honest-to-goodness carving tools, if I only knew what they were. (At the very least, a little rasp or file.) I'm not sure that would help, though; perhaps you can't tell in this photo, but there seem to be some impurities or inconsistencies in the Fimo itself. Perhaps I need to knead and work it out more, to make it more uniform.

I thought I rolled the sheets pretty thin, but it still seemed to take a lot of cutting to get down through the pink and into the green. You can see, in the cuts that went deep enough, what I mean about the "carving" ending up more like hacking and scraping at the stuff.

Also, the Fimo doesn't seem to stick to itself very well. The rightmost rectangle cut out of the pink was actually just two straight cuts, and then I was able to pry apart the Fimo and break off the rectangle of pink. (That technique may make for an interesting sort of art in its own right.) Not visible in this picture is a bit where I was actually able to pry the green away from the pink using just my fingernails. It was fairly soft, not too brittle.

When I made this, I also made a similar disc out of two different colours of Fimo Classic, so I could compare their consistencies with Fimo Soft. I'll try that one another night though, I'm a bit tired now.

So yeah. I'm not sure if I'll do something like this again, since the results are less than wonderful. But it was interesting to experiment.