This week I made a purple polymer polka-dot pendant. 🙂
Hollow polymer clay doughnut pendant by Cate van Alphen
I have been rearranging my work room, so I had to keep things simple for this week of my 2015 Polymer Clay Challenge.
P.S. I wrote a tutorial a while back for making the hollow doughnut shape (just use your favourite method to decorate a sheet of clay). Here’s a polka-dot tutorial (it’s similar to what I did except I made some dents in my background sheet of clay first).
I have completed my first focal for the 2015 Polymer Clay Challenge. After spending so much time working on colour swatches, I came up with an abstract design with blocks of colour. I was thinking of Mondrian compositions. I wanted to create a painterly effect, although that probably would have horrified Mondrian!
Orange colour block pendant by Cate van Alphen
For the shape of the pendant I went back to my comfort zone and made a hollow doughnut.
This month’s Art Bead Scene challenge painting is Autumn by Alphonse Mucha. I made a hollow doughnut pendant using colours from the painting and a floral pattern to convey the bountiful atmosphere of the painting. Here is a video demo of me making the polymer clay pendant.
Autumn from “The Seasons (series)”, 1896 Alphonse Mucha Oil on Panel
The first thing that caught my eye in the painting was her beautiful tendrils of red hair. I used a mix of red silk yarn, ombre silk ribbon and strands of beads to represent this and the maturing foliage.
VoilĂ – Autumn on a string. Or should a say many strings? 🙂
Way back on the 18th of September I did a demo at the Craftworkshop in Sedbergh (there are weekly demos in the shop and a range of lovely craft items for sale, so pop in if you are in the area). The pendant was designed as my focal for the ABS September challenge, but due to unforseen circumstances I haven’t been able to blog untill now (or make any further progress on my challenge piece).
There are three videos, the first one is making a sheet of mokume gane from polymer clay:
The next video is making the hollow doughnut. The last step is missing from the video but it is to turn the cutter around and cut off the excess clay. There is also a step by step doughnut tutorial here on my blog.
The last video is an optional step – putting a trim around the edge of the baked pendant. This can hide imperfections or become a design feature by using a contrasting colour.