Things do not always go to plan!

I decided to be strict with myself and work through some mica shift techniques before dabbling with anything that has come in my lastest order but things do not always go to plan! I intended to use a floral texture sheet, well it is actually a Cuttlebug embossing plate, which has the positive design on one side and the negative of it on the other. I thought this would look good if I created a mica shift version of each, to compare, and then inlay strips from one into the other. However, I found that the plates did not create a deep enough impression, in my pearlised Premo polymer clay, to allow me to slice off the raised parts of the design.

This means I will have to put this exercise on hold, until I have purchased a deeper cut rubber stamp. To save wasting one of the pieces of pinky-purple pearl clay I had mixed (approximately 3 parts pearl to 1 part colour) and impressed, I cut it into a curved triangular shape. My first instinct was to go for the circle cutters but I stopped myself! After baking the piece, I rolled a thin layer of mixed silver polymer clay (1 part silver to 1 part pearl) onto the imprinted surface, ensuring that the silver clay had got well pressed into the impressions, and baked this. It then took a lot of sanding, by hand, to remove the excess layer of silver clay, down to the original pinky-purple surface with the silver clay just remaining in the imprinted parts of the design.

I like the end result but this was a very labour intensive way to create it. As the impression was quite shallow, I was not possible to just press the raw clay into the impressions and scrape the surface clean, as the clay kept pulling out, which is why I had do it this way.

I had mixed a lot of pinky-purple pearl clay, for my intended mica shift designs, so I used some to make a bezel with the Cabezel mould from Shades of Clay. It was very easy to do and looked fine but I did not bake it, as I had not really planned any design to make with it. I thought I had better keep this coloured clay mix for its intended use, at some later date. I also made a cabochon with some left over clay, which I have incorporated into the brooch design below.

This is an in progess photo. Interestingly, I took this photo in the evening, just using my daylight lamp but for some reason it almost looks like a black and white photo, the colours although subtle have got really lost. It was also difficult to photograph because the silver leaf is very shiny and just reflected the light back at the camera.

I have started a couple of other brooches, made from irregular triangular pieces, but they are in the early stages at the moment. I think before I do anymore experimenting, I need to make some of my experimental pieces into finished brooches for the Designers ‘n’ Artists Market  that is coming up soon, on Saturday 3 July.