"Makin" It

As was mentioned in my post about the "Screw" Necklace, I used an extruder to make the sides of the necklace.

An extruder is a tool (mine was made for polymer clay) that pushes out a line of clay in a variety of shapes.  I haven't used mine that much and sometimes I wonder why.  It is such a handy little tool.

This is a Makin Extruder, which can be bought in any craft store.  It comes with a large variety of (for lack of a better word) templates.  These templates are placed in one end, the clay goes in the other end and then the handle is turned..... pushing the clay out through the template.  This creates a line of clay in the shape of the hole in the center of the template.  The templates come in a variety of shapes, triangles, squares, rectangles and circles to name a few.  

For the "Screw" pendant I used the square template for the outside edges.  I needed something to create the well that would hold the resin.  Since the size of the square extrusion was rather large, I cut it into fourths after extruding it.  The inside divisions were rolled by hand using a flat sheet of Plexiglas to make them more even.  

Another great feature of the extruder is it's ability to make hollow pieces.  (It did take me quite a little while to figure out how to use it.   Unfortunately it's been quite awhile ago, so I'm sure it will take me that long again.)  These templates push out something equivalent to a piece of "macaroni."  (Tried covering a piece of spiral macaroni once with metal clay paste........ it didn't work.)  

This piece took me a long time to make as I wasn't sure how I wanted to finish it.  I made the focal piece in a class and obviously my idea changed along the way.  I didn't finish it the way I thought I would.  (Hence the extra two holes at the top.)   

Backing it up

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the back of our bezel pieces were important too.  For these pieces we embossed designs into scratch foam for both the back and the bail.  This was done with a ball point pen and an assortment of other tools.

Of course the design will come out reversed and it is difficult to get a good idea what it will look like.  Wanaree uses Silly Putty to test the designs.   Just soften a piece of Silly Putty, push it onto your design and you can instantly see what it is going to look like.   The design on the far right is the one I chose.  I didn't like any of them until I gave them the putty test.  But, the two on the right look far better than they appear here.  We did the bail designs the same way.  

This isn't the best picture. I think I'm going to take the flex-shaft to it and get the high points much smoother.  

This was not my original backing.  The piece I made for the backing the first time was too small (thus the need for the thicker border in the drawing.)  It was already dry before I realized it wasn't the right size so as with lots of metal clay greenware it would be used in something.  In this case I used it with a ring shank I had made during my Rio Certification class and had never fired.  Voila!  A new ring (for sale....... size 7 1/2 if anyone is interested.)