This is my first week making yellow components for my 2015 Polymer clay challenge. To explain how I got where I got, we need to go back to orange, and then even further back to when I was in primary school.
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For some of my primary schooling I went to a Waldorf school. This meant that all my books were little works of art. So for maths, instead of drawing a line between a day’s sums we drew a little pattern. The paper was grid lined so I invariably ended up with zigzags of increasing complexity. Sometimes there was more pattern than sums. So when I came to tidy away my orange canes, I saw a load of triangles. Lots of triangles = zigzag!

Zigzag pattern polymer clay cabochon by Cate van Alphen
The first sheet I made was slightly clunky and approaching visual indigestion. I realised I needed areas of plain colour to break up the busy canes.

Polymer clay pattern sheet – WIP
Then, all too soon, it was time to switch to yellow. Since I’d spent so much time fiddling with the orange pattern sheets, I knew there wouldn’t be enough time to make yellow canes AND another zigzag sheet. So I made a mokume gane pendant that was a little underwhelming because it didn’t have the contrast (and I was worried other colours would swamp the yellow).

Yellow mokume gane pendant by Cate van Alphen
Along came Suzanne Ivester’s “Painting with Polymer” class on the Virtual Retreat and I realised I could use sheets of marbled clay like inlay.

Yellow zigzag polymer clay pendant by Cate van Alphen
I also made a matching pair of focals, which I’ll probably use for earrings.

Earring focals by Cate van Alphen
I also made some cabochons that will probably become shank buttons.

Polymer clay cabochons by Cate van Alphen
And I put some of the pattern off-cuts into a ready-made metal bezel.

Polymer clay pendant by Cate van Alphen
It has been really strange working with a new palette of colours especially when I was part way through another project and some of the colours are the same. I think the biggest challenge with yellow will be not overwhelming it with its companions.