Window Candy Box by Jill Kollmann
Have fun creating this candy box with resin windows. The clay techniques are basic, and if you have wanted to try your hand at some fun projects using Lisa Pavelka’s Magic-Glos, you’ll have fun and make some discoveries. Note: Only individually wrapped candies should be put into your polymer clay candy box. The clay should not come in direct contact with any edible items. TOOLS: ● Pasta machine or acrylic rolling rod with spacers to keep clay at an even thickness ● Clay blade ● Graduated oval cutters (see picture) ● Tiny heart cutter about ½ inch; I use the one from the Polyform set ● Texture sheet - I used one that happens to exactly fit the oval cutter (see picture), and line art is best ● Work tile ● UV lamp or sun light
SUPPLIES ● Black Premo clay, 2, 2 oz. blocks ● Silver Leaf, 1.5 sheets ● Pinata Alcohol Inks in Burro Brown, Senorita Magenta and others as desired ● 400 grit wet/dry sand paper ● Lisa Pavelka’s Magic-Glos ● Repel Jel ● Wide packing tape, clear ● “1 plastic such as the packaging that batteries come in with the #1 inside the triangle marking on the package OR a small square of wax paper ● Sealant clay-compatible; I use Future PRE-REQUISITES You should know how to do the Pavelka Peel as it is not broken out in lots of detail. You should be able to follow written instructions for making adjustments with cutters and texture sheets of sizes other than those I am using.. If you have never worked with Magic-Glos it would be a good idea to do a couple of little sample experiments first. It’s also advisable that you go to Lisa’s web site to look at her video on how to use Magic-Glos. For this project you will be doing some things differently, but it would be good to know her tips and tricks first. Let’s get started! PLEASE READ THROUGH THE ENTIRE PROJECT before you start. Knowing what comes next and how things will fit together will help you stay on track.
Here is a picture of the oval cutter set and the texture sheet I used. The 5th and 6th ovals up from the smallest were used to make the box and the lid, respectively. This strip texture sheet by Polyform is almost an exact fit to wrap around the smaller of the two oval cutters I used, which are sitting on top of the rest of the set. This texture sheet makes it very easy to fit the clay around the cutter. MAKING ADJUSTMENTS: If you are using a different size cutter or texture sheet, first wrap a strip of paper around the smaller cutter, just matching the ends, and then remove it from the cutter. The length of this strip of tape or paper is approximately the length of the strip of clay needed to wrap around the cutter to form the box, plus about ¼ inch margin for beveling the edges at the back of the box. The width of this strip of paper is the height of your box. You can make it the height of the cutter or shorter or taller as you like. You will use this strip of paper as a template to cut the clay after doing the Pavelka Peel later on. IF YOU LIKE PRECISION WORK - do a tiny bit of additional preparation here. Measure the cutting edge of your two ovals and calculate the difference in size. Divide it by 2, and this is the thickness of the sheets of clay you will want to use for constructing the body of the box. Determine which setting on your machine will make that thickness of a sheet of clay. Later on when you cut the lid and the flange, the difference between those two will be the same as the thickness of the wall of the box. The lid will fit exactly on the outside, and the flange will fit exactly on the inside so the lid will be tight. If you don’t care for precision work, don’t worry about it. We’ll work it out.
Prepare the smaller of the two ovals for forming the box by wrapping it with a strip of paper, and tape the ends together. Later on you will be baking the box on the cutter, and the paper will help it slip off more easily. Set this aside while we work on preparing the heart-shaped windows.
We are going to take advantage of the fact that Magic-Glos will not stick to raw clay. We are going to make little heart-shaped windows that will fit perfectly into the openings you will later create on the side of the box. I have rolled out a bit of black clay to a #5 (#7 is thickest) on my Amaco machine, placed it on the #1 plastic, and cut two hearts using the ½ inch cutter.
Remove the centers and use a toothpick or the tip of a paintbrush to clean up the edge of the cut if necessary. You have created a dam that will hold the resin while it cures, and then it will remove cleanly. It will NOT seep under the clay - how cool is that!
Fill the two cavities with Magic-Glos. NOTES ON REMOVING BUBBLES You can’t use heat! It will melt the plastic. That’s O.K. You can gently tap the plastic on the table a few times to ease the bubbles to the surface where you can pop them with a pin or toothpick. Or if a bubble is already on the surface but won’t pop, move it to the center and use a light touch with a clean dry finger and press it gently onto the bubble. It, and a bit of resin around it, will lift out. Cure the resin under UV light as directed on the package and/or Lisa’s online video. Peel off the clay. The edges of my hearts look dark but that’s not clay; that’s just the lighting. Note that even if you filled the cavities to the top, the hearts might still be a bit concave. That’s O.K. as we’re going to add more any way. Get your clay blade, and gently and carefully slip it under the resin hearts to remove them from the #1 plastic. NOTE: If by any chance you work with regular two-part resin and have the special release agent for molding it, DO NOT be tempted to use that release agent for this technique. It reacts with the #1 plastic and the Magic-Glos and fuses them together. Wanna know how I know that???????
Here are our hearts. You can trim rough edges with scissors or use 400 grit sand paper ONLY on the edges. At this point, these are a bit concave. This is where you can add Tiny Tats or teensie little charms, and then cover with another layer of the Magic-Glos and cure again. I left mine alone. If you want to leave them clear as I did, that’s fine. Add another layer of Magic-Glos and make sure the tops are attractively rounded. Since they are no longer sitting on #1 plastic, you can use Lisa’s recommended heat techniques for removing bubbles if necessary. O.K. - Now back to our clay to start working on the body of the box. Condition a block of black clay and roll it out into a medium-thickness sheet. Mine is at a #5 on my Amaco machine. Don’t make this too thick, as we are going to double up for the body of the box. Make sure the sheet of clay is large enough to use the template you made for the body of the box, or if you are using a Polyform texture sheet make sure the entire sheet will fit on the clay. (assuming you are using the same oval cutters I used). Make sure that the sheet of clay is ALSO big enough to cut the LARGER of the two ovals, for the lid of the box. You need enough Pavelka Peel clay for the body of the box AND the lid. Cover the clay with silver leaf.
To do the Pavelka Peel: Press the texture sheet firmly into the clay which is covered with silver leaf. Apply the Pinata inks and let them dry. Use strips of the clear packing tape and burnish to the clay, then rip off quickly to remove leaf and ink from the top. All the grooves from the impressions left by the texture sheet should still have leaf and clay in them.
Here’s what it looks like after ripping off the packing tape to remove leaf and inks from the surface. There are still some little areas that I need to clean up. If you need to do some clean-up, you can apply fresh tape, burnish, and rip in those areas. You can also gently sand off tiny bits after the box is baked.
Roll out a strip of clay as shown at the top of this picture. It’s the second layer for building the body of the box. Therefore it needs to be at least the length and width of the template you created for the body. As before, mine is #5 on my Amaco machine, which is the third thickest setting. Cut the Pavelka Peeled strip and place it on top of the plain black strip, making sure to not trap air between the two layers. Place your box template on top and cut out the APPROXIMATE body of the box but leave a little margin around the edges of the template so you can trim and fit perfectly.
Use your clay blade to bevel one edge of the strip. Gently pick it up and wrap it around your paper-covered oval to see how it fits. Gauge where the ends will come together and bevel the opposite end of the strip. Make sure to bevel in the other direction so one beveled edge will overlap the other for a smoother finish. If you must, you can butt the edges. but the beveling can make it easier to hide the seam in the back. Hiding that seam as well as possible is more important than whether you bevel or butt cut. Once you have the strip just the right length, trip the long edges. Make sure that the width of the strip is consistent from end to end by using your template, the texture sheet, or a ruler to measure. DO NOT BAKE IT YET!.
Cut your windows. Use the same cutter you used for creating the dam for the Magic-Glos. Cut as many openings as there are windows. We do it now rather than earlier in order to avoid distorting the window shapes, and to more accurately place the windows. Note that you are cutting on a curved shape, so use your finger on the inside of the box base and/or cut against the oval cutter inside, but rock the heart cutter a bit from side to side to make sure you will get clean edges. Remove the cut-outs. Finish off the insides of the cut edges with a toothpick or some other
small tool to make them smooth and free of little jags where the heat cutter has a seam. Here I’ve cut both heart windows. The upper one on the left is partially on the oval cutter and partially above it, so I used my finger on the inside of the box so the heart cutter would have something supporting the clay while I pushed it in. The heart on the lower right is fully backed by the oval cutter. And, yes, I forgot to leave the paper wrapped around the oval cutter so removing this after baking took some effort. Ugh! Speaking of baking - do it now following the directions on the clay wrapper for time and temperature. Let’s get ready to make the lid. Here are the two oval cutters, the baked box, a double-thickness of black for a flange, and a double thickness of the clay for the lid. How to get there: Place the rest of the Pavelka Peel clay on a layer of plain black so you have double thickness of #5 on my Amaco machine. I ALWAYS cover the clay with a bit of deli paper so the top edge of the cut clay will be gently rounded. Use the LARGER of the two ovals to cut the lid. Then on a double-thick layer of plain black, follow the same process but use the SMALLER of the two ovals to cut the flange for the inside of the lid. So you have two cut ovals - a pretty one for the lid, and a plain black one slightly smaller for the flange. FIDDLE FACTOR ALERT! I call a “Fiddle Factor Alert” when a step requires a bit of trial and error. Assembling and fitting the lid is one of those times.
The goal here is to get the lid to line up with the outside edges of the body of the box, and to get the flange to line up with the inside edge of the body of the box so it will keep the lid from slipping off. Note that the thickness of the walls of the box
is just about equal to the difference in size of the large and small oval cutters. Yours may be different and require a bit more fiddling to get the desired tight fit. “Dry fit” the flange to where it looks centered on the under side of the lid, and then place the lid on the box making sure that the front side is forward. If you need to slide the lid around a bit to line it up, the flange should “give” a little. Remove the lid and make sure the flange still looks good, then press it into place. Put Repel Jel on the top edge of te box body and down the inside edge about half an inch or so. Place the lid on th box, do a final “fit check” and bake it. When it comes out of the oven, let it sit for about 5 minutes then remove the lid for the rest of the cooling time. Use some of the foiled scrap clay for the bottom of the box. Again, start with double thickness. In order o get a good fit and solid connections, I use a slightly different approach than what you might have seen elsewere.. I have placed the clay for the bottom of the box on a tile which fits into my oven. Then I pressed around the edges to thin them a bit. Then I do a dry fit, and you can barely see the impression from where the body of the box sat on the bottom. Now I know the bottom clay is the right size, and I’m going to thin the edges a bit more. I want the center of the bottom to be thick, but the edges to be quite thin - 1/16th or so. Now I press the box body down into the bottom almost all the way. It is well seated. Then I use my blade or a craft knife to trim off any bottom clay that protrudes beyond the edges of the box. When you look at the picture of the finished box, you cannot see the edge of the bottom. Bake the top and bottom. together.
FIDDLE FACTOR ALERT!
Fitting the windows into the openings is a bit fiddly. Here we go! WHILE THE BOX IS STILL WARM FROM BAKING IT WITH THE BOTTOMinsert one of the resin windows by any means necessary. You can use a tool with a bit of clay to help position it as shown, or you can just use your fingers. I just use my fingers. You will need to apply a fair amount of pressure to get the window into the opening so you will need fingers on the inside of the box as well as on the outside. If you do this while the clay is still warm it will be a bit easier, and then as the clay cools it will tighten up a tiny bit to hold the window in place. Feel with you fingers to make sure that the window is evenly and completely seated into the opening. The window is thinner than the walls of the box because of the thickness of the clay. You can seat the window towards the outside edge of the opening or more in the center of the opening. I seat it more towards the outside edge of the opening so it’s more flush with the box. Try to get both windows inserted and seated before the box is completely cooled.
TROUBLESHOOTING
My windows are thinner than the sides of my box. I want to add some Magic-Glos to the INSIDE of the box, but if I stand it up the product will run around, and even if it’s a sunny day I want to make sure the product is partially set before I take it outside. So, I put a little Magic-Glos on the inside and placed it on top of the UV lamp with the box and the lamp on their sides. It takes longer to cure but it does cure completely. The additional resin also helps to make sure that little window is secure.
Here, I decided that I wanted the OUTSIDE of the Magic-Glos windows to be a little more rounded. So I added a bit of product, placed the box on it’s side, and held the lamp over the top resting it directly on the box. Once I knew the Magic-Glos was set up enough to stay in place, I took it ouside in the sun for final curing, propping the box to make sure it didn’t roll. If it had not been a sunny day, it might have taken a half hour or so for the lamp to completely cure this. Last but not least, if for some reason your windows have a loose fit, you can use a teeny bit of clay-compatible adhesive ON THE EDGES and insert them from the inside of the box so any residual adhesive won’t be on the outside of box.
FINISH as you like. I did a gentle sanding of the entire exterior using wet/dry sand paper, carefully avoiding the windows, then sealed with 2 coats of Future. And, of course, filled it with Hershey Kisses!
ABOUT WAX PAPER You can use wax paper instead of #1 plastic. Prepare the clay for making the windows and press it gently onto a small square of wax paper. Fill with Magic-Glos and cure. Peel off the clay. Peel the wax paper from the back of the hearts. Rinse with water to remove residual “paper fuzz” and wax but don’t use anything abrasive to scrub. A finger nail works fine. Dry thoroughly and it will still likely look a bit hazy. Add a layer of Magic-Glos to the backs and cure again. The hearts should be clear.
You can get MagicGlos and a Lamp from Polymer Clay Productions! Enjoy!