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

My Take on the Beautiful Barbet Bird

Image
When I went to Africa among the many animals I fell in love with was the Barbet - a most unusual patterned bird.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-and-yellow_barbet   There are several kinds of Barbets. This is my take on the Barbet, a wearer of many patterns and colors, blue legs and feet and attention seeking. Making the Bird That Flew Out of the Pillow (see previous post), I just had to make another bird.  This time I took some photos of the process to share with you. Materials: steel wire, pliers, wire cutters, Ultra-lite clay, aluminum foil, polymer clay (solid colors and old canes) Taking the steel wire and forming the bird head, body, legs and feet was the most difficult part of the process.  Figuring out the scale, the type of bird shape, how to attach the legs and form the feet definitely took the most time.  It was also the most essential part. Starting the wire form The next step was filling the body with foil and using 28 g wire to secure ...
Read more

The Bird that Flew Out of the Pillow

Image
The Bird Flew Out of the Pillow  Sometimes an idea needs time to foment or stir up the creative mind to action.  This is one of those times!     I have a friend/client who is on the tail end of finishing the decorating of her home.  She is using a wonderful fabric with woven character birds on her kitchen chairs.  We fell in love with the birds and she sent me (she lives in another town) enough fabric to make myself a pillow.  The more I looked at that fabric the more I wanted to create a bird for her table.   This is the product and I'm waiting for my friend to name her new table accessory!   It took awhile to plan an attack.  I used steel wire, wire cutters, pliers, aluminum foil, Ultra lite Clay, and polymer clay.  In my next post, I will go into much greater detail of the process.  I've made another bird and took pictures along the way. I'm sure this bird will have quite a story  when she arrives to her ...
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 pai...
Read more