Polymer Clay Challenge – Month 2

Continuing my goal of 1 new Polymer Clay project a month, here’s my month 2 creation:

Two different molds were used to get the textures. Most of the bottom disc is hidden but it could easily be a focal on its own. I was trying to give an image of birds flying high in the blue sky, soaring over fields of wheat and grasses far below.

I made the two sets of discs several weeks ago and used alcohol inks to add the brown, green and blue. Then they sat and waited while I dealt with other things, until 2 days ago that is.

I took them out of their dust protector yesterday. Looking at the discs with fresh eyes I wasn’t thrilled with the darkness of the green and brown colours so, grabbing some rubbing alcohol, I started dabbing them off with a fine tip brush and…oops, dabbed off too much. So I mixed some more of each colour with rubbing alcohol and added some back.

Next came the blue. The original colour was okay except that the sky and the birds were blue. I used a neutral grey ink to colour the birds, and a bit of gold to brighten the tiny beaks.

I had the idea to make tiny domed beads to go with the focals and used some of the lighter blue and the copper that I made the wavy disc beads with last month. Since I mixed up a little too much (about 20 times more than I needed), I also made 2 beads with a rough circular shape.

The idea was the little domed beads would be attached to ear studs with built in loops, the rough ball beads would hang from the loops and the focals from the ball beads, kind of like this:

Into the oven everything went. I had used a transparent polymer clay for the 2 sets of discs. When all came out the bird discs looked…blah…flat looking without texture. Plus the colours of the domes and rough beads did not work with the discs. I put those aside to use another time.

I read somewhere that someone (can I be less vague?) had used pencil crayons to bring colour to their clay beads. Wanting to finish up my experiment I decided to do the same and used a deep blue to make the sky texture stand out, then a white to brighten the birds with just a touch of black here and there. Finally, a gold to colour was added to the tiny beaks and everything was sealed with Ren Wax. Those were really tiny beaks and the colours went over a bit.

Now I wish the birds were a little brighter but trying to do that will be a project for another day. The lopsided connection of the two discs is something that can't be corrected now. Like my first polymer clay experiment, these are staying with me.