Rubber-Stamped Clay

Did you know you can rubber-stamp on clay?  You can!

I made these polymer clay stars to be the surprise inside the latest set of altered matchboxes I made for my on-going Art Abandonment project.  

I rolled out the clay and made the stars with a small cookie cutter.

I used a set of snap-together 3/16" alphabet stamps from Polymer Clay Express (yep--these are the same stamps I used in my last post to add words to a fabric heart) and a black stamp pad from Staples to stamp the phrase "Make A Wish" onto the soft clay.  Very gentle pressure is all you need; if you push too hard you will get impressions from the square edges of the stamps, and that doesn't look good!

After baking the clay (at 275 degrees for 15 minutes), I let it cool, then brushed each star with Sculpey Gloss Glaze.  The glaze dries to the touch in about an hour, but you should allow 24 hours for it to harden completely.

Half of these altered matchboxes were for an "Art Abandonment" craft swap on Craftster.  For that swap we sent our partner a total of six items:  five for her to abandon in her town, and one for her to keep.  My partner prefers darker colors, so I made the box below for her.

I have some exciting news to report:  two of the people who found my matchboxes left replies on the Art Abandonment Facebook page !!  Here's the first one, with the picture I took when I abandoned that box:

I found Altered Matchbox #7 by L.A. at the main Post Office in Williamsburg, Virginia. I was looking for a check (which did not arrive), but found this instead, and it cheered both me and my 7-year-old, and started a conversation about what we might wish for, and might have nudged us to visit the Occasion for the Arts before going home... and later it was an appropriate image for the day for my Project 365 ... Thank you!


The second reply was a response to the comment above:

Omg!  I found #2 in the same place but behind a John Hancock statue.  Aren’t they great?

You can just barely see the box in front of the statue's hand, on the bench.  Apparently it fell behind the statue after I left; I'm glad someone found it anyway!