A little chat

The other day one of my colleagues, who does a lot of clay work, brought in some clay jewellery she had bought from a craft fair. The pieces were selling for about £9 and had been made by an American woman.

One of the pieces she showed me was a little pendant in a sort of pine cone shape and it was constructed by adding layers of cane in the shape of leaves around a base bead to create the final pendant.

I was amazed by two things; the first that it was so well done and looked so professional. The detail was excellent and it was so well designed. The second; that I could see how it had been made. The basic ingredient was a leaf cane made out of green and black and with a border added to its edge. This had been reduced down to about a centimetre in size and then slices taken from the cane to build the final pendant. It seemed such a simple idea and yet was so effective.

Now I havent yet had a go at making a leaf cane and it is something I have been meaning to do. I have a tutorial which I found on the internet which shows how you make it. It makes me wonder if I could replicate this idea. Of course the beauty was in the fineness of the detail and I don't think that reducing canes has been my strong point so far, but I am certainly going to try it out.