Saturday, May 7, 2016

Making of lotus pond

This post is for those who were interested in knowing how the necklace "Lotus pond" was put together.

This is my own design.  This took lot a of time to draw (I know it is simple but I took time) and decide the color combination.  I was just new to the polymer clay medium at that time, around one and a half year ago.  I was so apprehensive about how everything will turn out to be and so on. Especially the baking part of it is very tricky.  I have burnt a tons of them and also under-baked so many of my jewelry.  Let me get to the point.

Assuming the lotus is what is of interest, I have explained how I went about.
I have used gold, translucent and alzerian crimson (the middle one) colored clay from Sculpey.

To get the color of the lotus flower. Color recipe:  Mix 2 parts of translucent clay with 1/4 part of alzerian crimson and you will get this.  It will look opaque but once you bake it the alluring color evolves.
Mixing the above mentioned colors of clay and roll it out to a plug.  

Slice the plug so that you get nice circle shaped pieces and fold it to a petal shape.
Take a small blob of gold clay, it need not necessarily be gold, it can also be the color of the base of the necklace.

Arrange the petal shaped clay on the gold block in a circle.
You may bake the flower at this juncture and then do the second inner layer.  Or if you are comfortable to put another layer, you can finish the flower and bake it once for all.

Now make a thinner plug for the smaller petals of the inner circle.
Repeat the above steps 
slicing circle shaped pieces and making smaller petals.


arrange the inner layer of petals and make a small ball of gold and place it in the center and use any tool which can give  neat dents to the clay so that it will look like the stigma.

Now the baking part of it.  Bake it as per the instruction on the packet of the clay you are using.  This is baked at 130 degree Celcius for about an hour because I have used Sculpey brand.  I bake all my projects for an whole hour at the specified baking temperature.  Before baking this kind of 3D projects, you may want to take some precautions.  You have to prop them with aluminium foil, or embed them in corn starch or such things.  This one I have propped with aluminium foil.  

Grab some foil from your kitchen and make a small cup with it. 
And place the flower into it.

And of course do not forget to keep the project closed while baking.  If not, it may discolor the piece.  You can stick the baked flower into your unbaked base and add buds, leaves and more flowers as you may please :)  This flower was just pressed in to raw clay and it will just stay put when baked.  If you wish, may add a tad bit of Sculpey bake and bond so it stays secure and no doubt about it coming off on you.



Behind the scene:  I had no pictures of making this flowers at all with me.  I had to redo it, so it is not the same flower on the completed picture above.  Luckily, I had the mixed pink translucent clay in my stash box, it had attracted a lot of dirt in the meanwhile, that is the reason it looks dirty in the photos.

The other pictures of the necklace are the ones below
The lentil beads which went into the construction of the necklace. 
And the textured folded beads.  You can find lots of tutorials for the lentil beads and for the folded beads, I would recommend watching Helen Breil's video.

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