Raven In Flight





One of the benefits of taking online classes is building an arsenal of techniques that can be drawn on to produce the design that is in the mind’s eye.   After practicing making transfers to polymer in Heather Campbell’s class, a design idea popped into my head that could incorporate some of my own photographs into my polymer jewelry. 
Looking through my photographs (I have hundreds..really) and deciding which images to use took a little time!  I made digital copies and turned them into black and white photographs, reduced them to contact sheet size and printed them using the toner printer.   Then I rolled out the creamy blend of white and Sahara Fimo polymer clay to #3, placed it on a tile and put a thin coating of clay softener over the clay.  The cut out images were placed upside down on the clay.  As you can see from the photo to the finished piece, the image is reversed.  If there is writing that is very important! 
Learning to burnish the images with my fingers and a blade tool was more difficult and more important that I expected.  Once the images were burnished, I waited between 15 and 30 minutes.  I admit it! I peeked by lifting an edge to see if the ink had transferred to the clay.  Some had and some not.  I burnished again.  Lifted again and burnished again until most of the ink was on the clay.  It seemed that the more detailed the image the less clear it transferred.  Out of 4 images, 2 came out good. 
Before baking
The raven in flight was my pick to make into a pendant.  Because the ink stays wet until the piece is baked, it is important to carefully lift it.  I layered it on black, stacked that on a sheet of ivory with silver foil (left from another project) and stacked that on another layer of black.  Thin strips of the foiled ivory were placed around the image.  After baking, the finished look has a vintage quality to it.  I like it!  What do you think?
Finished!
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