Under the Sea

When I started teaching myself metal clay, I tried different projects in books and magazines. Many of those pieces never made it to a finished piece of jewelry. Some I still wear (but not many), some have been re-worked into completely new pieces and some like my "Under the Sea" pieces have been laying in a box for the last two years.

Every so often, I pull out that box (full of many unfinished pieces) and take another look. The "Under the Sea" pieces were part of a project from Art Jewelry Magazine and involved making a polymer clay piece molded from a variety of objects. The second part was making a two part silicon mold from the polymer clay piece. (That's a lot of molding!)

PMC3 clay was used in the silicon mold to create a large piece for a pendant. Standard clay was used in the same mold to create earrings that would be smaller.

Even though the earring pieces were smaller, they were still too big (and heavy) for earrings. So.... I got out the jeweler's saw (which has been laying in a box for awhile) and sawed one of the pieces in half. (I didn't do such a hot job as the pieces needed a lot of filing.) All I had was little files and they weren't going to do the trick. (That's another reason they got put into the box.) Since I bought a big file (to finish my tetrahedron) I pulled the piece back out and wow the filing was much quicker and easier.

So, today I finished the big necklace (changing it somewhat from the original project), finished a pair of earrings and made a smaller necklace out of the uncut earring piece.

Phew, more pieces done for the Oil Heritage Festival which is coming up in a couple of weeks. More on that topic later. (I'm going to do my first show. My tent is in the mail..... rather the UPS truck.)

Again, sorry for the bad photos.