An UTEE experiment and a sinking feeling in my tummy....

So my mother decided she needed some little girl time with my daughter last Saturday. As soon as the child had cleared the threshold, I was back in my studio cooking up a little UTEE experiment. (UTEE stands for Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel. It's basically this powder that, when heated, turns all plasticy. You can use a melting pot to melt enough of this stuff to pour in little molds, or in little puddles to stamp into, or whatever else you can imagine. The possibilities really are endless!)

In some emailing earlier last week, Denise and I had mused on the possibility of recycling all the little left-over gold threads from our felt embroidery and beading projects into inclusions for homemade paper. This morning it occurred to me that small snippets of gold thread would be awesome inclusions for some UTEE tiles. I also thought I'd snip up some left over felt and see how that would look.

So as soon as the house was clear, I was back in the studio heating up the melting pot. I'm still learning how to pour molds with the molten UTEE, so this was an experiment on several fronts. I learned that it takes a whole lotta UTEE powder to make one molded object. I thought I had put enough in for two, possibly three, little hearts. Turned out it was enough for one.

The one little heart is a little lopsided and it's actually hard to tell that it's a heart at all. A little more UTEE in the mold would have helped. The felt and gold threads (and a few seed beads thrown in as well) turned out to be cool little inclusions. Definitely something I'll try again!

So that was my UTEE experiment. And the horrible sinking feeling in my tummy? Yeah, that's because I've realized that I can now longer throw away my little bits of felt and scraps of gold thread. Another category for my hoarding!

Off to find little containers to store more bits in....