Trial new brooch designs

I had a mega session on Saturday, creating the new designs I sketched out the other day. I decided to make one of each of the eight designs, using the same coloured 'focal' piece for them all. For this I made a sheet of mokume gane, using purple, turquoise, green, pearl and translucent polymer clay and some silver metal leaf.  I was really pleased with the way the mokume gane turned out and it was great fun to make.

These are just the faces of the brooches, they will need the backs finishing - and judging by the results of my voting poll so far, I will be using locking pins. As I have made these brooches smaller, I will need to get some smaller pin fastenings (I have a new recommended source from America) but hopefully I will be able to get these completed to take to Coatesville. Although they are more fiddly to make smaller, the brooches look more delicate - and I think more 'valuable'.

Today I decided I had really better concentrate on getting my new screens and certain important things finished for the Coatsville Market. I have also started to paint a few more canvases for a few of my 'in progress' brooches, such as the one below which I think will be called 'Golden Mask'.

I recently bought some templates and included in the pack were four rubber stamps. I wanted to try out this one of the face. It is not the sort of thing I would normally buy (in fact I want to design my own rubber stamps) but I think it looks quite effective. I stamped it on to some striped polymer clay that I had left and layered it over gold metal leaf and gold Premo Sculpey.

Polymer clay photo frames

I am really pleased with these little photo frames - my first proper pieces made from polymer clay. The frames have a metal base, so I was able to bake them in the oven complete with the clay. Each one has been made with a different technique. From left to right:
1. Colour streaked polymer clay with metal leaf and silver gel pen additions, coated with satin glaze.
2. Mosaic-style tiles, coated with artist's matt acrylic varnish (it looks just the same as the satin glaze - it is not actually matt). This one is still in progress - I need to get some black grout to fill in the small spaces between the tiles.
3. Mokume Gane slices, with metal leaf, rolled into a black base clay. I do not want to glaze/varnish this frame, as I like the matt surface. The metal leaf seems well rolled in, so I think it will be durable.

My first attempt at ‘mokume gane’

It is exactly a month since my creative meltdown and I am now happy to say that I am totally hooked on polymer clay. Now I know what medium I want to work with, I just have to learn, refine and perfect my ability with it. At the moment, I am just trying out different techniques, to see which I enjoy the most. There are so many different things you can do with pc, it seems to have so much potential, that at present I can never see myself getting bored with it.


This is my first attempt at ‘mokume gane’. Not brilliant. It looks quite subtle, as I did not use enough contrasting colours in my layers, which I also think I squashed together too thinly. Need to try this again after re-reading the various, differing, instructions I have collected for this technique.