Faux Bone Texture Trick

Needle tracing tool as a texture tool

Last Fall I taught a workshop in the beautiful Oregon wine country (poor me). The venue was Fusion Headquarters owned by artists Gil and Carmen Reynolds. First of all, if you are ever in the Newburg, OR area, the Reynolds have the most adorable apartment you can rent while touring neighboring wineries and they are two of the most charming hosts you will ever meet. 

They are first and foremost, however, accomplished business owners and artists and have a passion for teaching. While I taught students different ways to incorporate their glass work into finished jewelry, Gil and Carmen explored some of the innovative ways they’ve developed for working with glass. One of my favorites was a product called liquid stringer. It can be mixed with glass powder and piped onto glass or mixed thicker and made into a clay. The versatility of this material is amazing and I immediately began playing with ways to pipe it into freeform shapes and will be experimenting much more with this material this year!

Gil and Carmen worked with Faux Bone for the first time and I am proud to say they loved it. They even made nearly identical pieces without even knowing it (he's laughing behind that dust mask)! And as always when I teach, I learned something too. Gil used a needle tracer to trace his saw pattern out on Faux Bone and I was fascinated by all the tiny dots it left. So, I rolled it around on a piece of Faux Bone and rubbed in some acrylic paint to see what would happen. It produced great, finely detailed texture (top photo). Looks like another tool I will be adding to my bench soon (poor me).

Visit Gil and Carmen on facebook!