Gilly Scott: “Never Give Up When You Come To A Dead End”

Gilly Scott lives in Brisbane with her husband and two fur babies. 

She currently has a day job as a system analyst and by night she is a polymer clay artist using 3D printers to manufacture her clay tools. Gilly has always done something arts and crafts related… crocheting, painting, teddy bear making, sewing, silver smithing, cake decorating and so on. 

She tended to move from one to another until she discovered polymer clay around 5 or 6 years ago, which she now knows will be her chosen art medium for the rest of her life. She loves to make millefiori canes and turning them into pens, beads and buttons. She also loves to make crazy critters and tooth fairy houses. 

To support her clay artwork Gilly designs and prints 3D clay tools. She has 10 printers over 70 3D printed sets of clay cutters available on her Etsy shop and has been manufacturing them on her 3D printers for over 2 years. She distributes her cutters all over the world. 

Nora Toure: Gilly, could you let us know about your background and your journey to Additive Manufacturing?

Gilly Scott: I have spent my entire life in the IT industry and was a self employed consultant for 25 years working mostly in the legal industry until the Global Financial Crisis when I took on a full time job as a Systems Analyst for a Legal firm in Brisbane. This freed up time which allowed me to return to my love of Art and I discovered Polymer Clay. 

Over a period of about 4 years my friends and I had been purchasing clay tools from overseas … sometimes happy with the purchase and a lot of the time not happy with the cutters not being sharp enough. I knew that the cutters had been 3D printed. So I decided to research the 3D printing industry and the process with a view to printing my own cutters and some for my friends.

I spent 6 months obsessing with learning as much as I could in my spare time and went to libraries, every 3D printer company in Brisbane, did a lot of googling and then managed to stumble across a half day 3D printing workshop being run by Steph Piper at Australia’s oldest hackerspace HSBNE. 

That was all I needed to fill in the gaps of my research journey. It really was a big of a learning curve even though I have worked in the IT industry all my life. It was just over two years ago when I bought my very first printer Flashforge Creator Pro.

Nora Toure: What is the story behind the “Clay Lady Downunder”?

Gilly Scott: I have had a love of Art all my life I have always been doing something creative. I discovered polymer clay by accident around 5 or 6 years ago when I researched a school project for my friend’s son. The journey has led me to making all sorts of things from jewellery, fairy house, and pens. I created fairy houses and started facebook page ‘Fairys Down Under’, and pens and then there was ‘Pen Lady Down Under’, and Jewellery, and so ‘Clay Lady Down Under’ and it seemed appropriate to call my mini-business ‘Clay Lady Down Under’.

Nora Toure: To date, what would you say is your greatest achievement in Additive Manufacturing? 

Gilly Scott: Owning and running 10 3D printers and sending tools all over the world.

Read the rest at Women in 3D Printing