Monday, September 7, 2009

I Love a Challenge!

Our daughter had a pair of earrings that were her absolute favorite.  She called one day and told me that she lost one and wanted me to make her a new pair just like them.  The picture below is the original earring.  It is made out of a thin strong metal with a baked enamel pearl-like finish.



It is nice to know she has so much confidence in what we can do but when I looked at this earring I was wondering how I could imitate it and yet still keep the sleek thinness without it being too fragile?  She also knows that I love a challenge, so of course I told her I would and once I sat down to work, the idea came to me on what to do.

I decided to dress it up a bit and do the fronts using a mica shift technique.  This is a technique that creates a "ghost-like" image in the clay where it appears to be textured but in fact it is silky smooth.   I will show how this is done in our "How We Do It" series later.

I love how the earrings came out and so decided to make a matching pendant which I hung from a navy blue ultrasuede cord and embedded a Swarovski crystal for a little added sparkle.



To finish them off, I decided to add some texture to the backs which gives a slight 3d effect when the earrings swirl around at times.



I am really glad I took on this challenge since it has inspired me to make more of these but with variations in design and color -- something I can really have fun with!

We will have some of these fun pieces in our Art Fire Studio soon but in the meantime, enter our Birthday Celebration Contest to win a $25 gift certificate towards anything in our shops.  Contest ends this Saturday evening.

2 comments:

Betty said...

For a moment there I thought you made a giant eye for earrings. Those are cool but the giant eye idea is cool too! Good job!

2 Good Claymates said...

That's funny. I can see what you mean -- I changed the photo and moved it down a bit and made it smaller, maybe that looks a little better now!