Sunday 27 June 2010

Lace cane experiment

Round cut pendant

The other day I was having a look through the photos of some artwork posted on Flickr. The jewellery I came across was clearly made by a professional, but what surprised me was how simple the basic technique was to create the final piece. The artist had simply used a lace cane of contrasting colours and used the slices to make a loop pendant. The final piece had been lovingly polished into a beautiful pendant.

The simplicity of this design intrigued me, so this morning I thought I would try it myself. I already had a black and white lace cane left over and even though it isn't the most exciting colour combination, it is neutral enough to try the experiment. I also wanted to test out my new circular cutters I have just bought from Ebay.

The first process was to roll out a blob of scrap clay into a fairly thick sheet and then cut thin slices off the lace cane to cover the surface so that none of the scrap clay can be seen. I then took a large cutter and cut a circular piece out of the sheet. Then I took the smaller cutter and cut a small disc from inside this circle of clay. (You do have to be a bit careful when you scrape up the final pendant as it can get a little bit mis-shaped.) The result was the pendant in the above photo. It is still not baked but I hope that once it is I can sand and polish it so that it will be smooth and shiny.

The back of this pendant has not been covered because I ran out of the cane! However as this is only my first test piece I will let this minor issue go this time.

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