Learning As We Go!

Recently I purchased Jeanette Kandray’s tutorial ‘Magnificent Mokume Gane’.  The pictures were so enticing that I just had to see and try her technique. 

Mokume Gane is a metal working technique (Japanese) that fuses several layers of different colored precious metals together to form a sandwich of alloys.  The term is now used in many other mediums where different colors of materials such as polymer clay or metal clays are sandwiched.  In the case of polymer clay, we stack sheets of colored clay, make a design in them with tools or texture sheets, and carefully slice some of the top color away exposing the stacked colors beneath.

Jeanette Kandray tutorial shares a technique that shortens the process considerably and produces varied effects depending on the choice of colors and texture sheets used.  The tutorial is well written and clearly illustrated.  In my opinion well worth the price of $12.00.    https://www.etsy.com/listing/457367494/magnificent-mokume-gane?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=magnificant&ref=sr_gallery_4

After experimenting on several sheets of clay and enjoying the process and the end products I decided to share my fun!  By changing the texture sheets and colors, you can produce such interesting patterns!

This is my first sheet of polymer clay following  the tutorial.  I used gold, purple, green , pearl and cobalt blue.

A finished pair of earrings I call 'Autumn Nights'

One of the things I like about using a tutorial is traveling to the creative places the technique takes me. I get to add things and change things once I understand the original idea.  I'm sharing one of those places here!

The following 5 sheets of polymer have the same colors as their base- gold, pearl, copper, ecru and antique gold.  I placed a copper thin sheet on top before I textured .   On the 3 lower sheets, I placed a thin sheet of black and then textured.  You can see how different each one looks depending of the top color and the texture.  In each case I carefully removed the raised parts of the design that were made by the pressing the texture into the clay.  The underlying colors peek through.  Remember that the colors below the top sheet are the same in each piece. 

Adding a different color as the top layer

finished pieces