Thistle Medallion

Taking a walk through a forest, on a mountain trail or through a meadow, always inspires me.  One of my favorite flowers on these walks is the thistle.  The details of that flower make me smile.  When I found this thistle stamp in a store, of course, I just had to have it.  I put it on my work table waiting for the right time to use it. 
One day I decided to make the thistle in fine silver clay and put a wire staple on the back.  That staple would allow me to make a backing of polymer clay and attach it securely to the silver.  I also made a silver flat bail with a hole toward the bottom so I could put it between two layers of polymer.  Both the staple and the hole would force polymer clay into those openings locking the silver in place.  
These are the 3 slabs of polymer for the Illuminance & Clarice beads
The back of the medallion is made from the sunburst slab in the front of the picture.
Combining metal clay with polymer clay fascinates me.  I love blending the colors of polymer and trying new techniques.  I just purchased a new tutorial (ebook) ‘Illuminance and Clarice Beads’ by Emma Ralph on the internet and have been anxious to try it out.  http://www.ejrbeads.co.uk/  What fun I had making luminescent beads!  I happened to glance over at the silver thistle and decided to use one of the luminescent slabs of polymer as the backing. 
Shows the first backing of polymer around the silver medallion that has been cured.
2nd backing and outside edging
I made the back, adhered the silver using the staple and cured the piece.  Then I placed a second piece of polymer on top of the back and added the bail and cured that.  The edge piece was applied and cured again.
Finished Medallion
 
The finished piece makes me think of my walks through a meadow with all the shades of yellow, gold and green.  The piece could easily be reversible.  Sometimes it just takes a while to put all the pieces together.  


Labels:
Location: Prescott, AZ, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Learning As We Go!

Image
Viking knit is the oldest method of chain making and I've become fascinated by it.  Once I conquered the single knit, I decided to add beads.  I could have googled or asked how it was done but it seemed like something I could just figure out.  And I've learned a lot as I proceeded first with tumbled turquoise beads and then with pearls.  I thought I'd share a few of the things I've learned.   Iif you want a great tutorial on viking knit technique, Trina Ann at http://blog.trinaann.com/  has written a clear concise easy to understand tutorial.  I highly recommend it.    Tumbled tuquoise beads in viking knit  I used tumbled turquoise beads in the first viking knit chain and I did not really know what I was doing.  But I went right ahead and as it turned out, I liked the end result.  Since the beads were irregular in shape there was a random quality to the finished product. During that process, I began to really understand the technique of viking knit.  Loo
Read more

Spring Do-Over Challenge

Image
Re-do of Original Pieces Plus My Art Beads  I’m hooked!  The Do-Over Challenge that Jeannie Dukic ‘JKD Studio’ www.jkdjewelry.com offers has become something I look forward to.  Jeannie sends pieces of her ‘old’ jewelry to those of us who sign up and we get to create something new from them.  It does not matter if we like the piece she sends because we take it apart, add beads from our stash and create a completely new piece.  It’s a great way to recycle. Original Necklace and earrings When I received my piece to re-create, it lay on my bead try for a while as I sorted through the possibilities.  There were 3 art beads that might work but only one yelled, “Me!  Take me!”  Fortunately I had more of the polymer cane that was used for that bead because I wanted smaller one to go with the big chosen art bead.  The green chips were to be filler beads highlighting my art beads.  Large 'Take Me!' bead! I made two pair of earrings.  One pair could be part of
Read more

The Draw of the Mojave Desert or Why I Started Designing Jewelry

Image
When you look at my etsy stores you see Mojave Stone jewelry .  In the 1970's, my father and two brothers mined a stone in the Mojave Desert in the middle of nowhere California!  Actually, the mine was somewhat but not very close to Desert Center.  It had been a gold/silver mine before they staked their claim and began mining stone.  My family lived in Missouri and the stone had to be trucked from the desert after strip mining it.  I was married and away from home so I got to hear the stories of making a road, fighting off bees, surviving the heat, being careful of the critters and all the other 'Wild West' excitement.  And I did not have to rough it! Dad was going to retire (some day) and make and sell the polished cabochons (a stone cut and polished usually with a flat back and a convex top) for jewelry.  In the meantime, he had some distributors sell it, some metal smiths create pieces, and he trademarked it as 'Mojave Royal Blue' and 'Mojave Stone'.  He
Read more