Out of my comfort zone

I don't really like the colour orange. (I'm not keen on yellow or mustard colours either.) I guess I prefer cooler colours like greens and purples and blues, although I'm a big fan of red as well.

So I wasn't very impressed when some polymer clay beads went "wrong" on me and I ended up with orange.

I was playing with translucent clay and alcohol inks and made a lovely warm red colour. I added copper leaf and I was really happy until they came out of the oven... ORANGE!

A similar set I made at the same time with out-of-the-packet trans red and silver leaf looked exactly as I expected.

Ah well. Next experiment - red sand in translucent clay. Came out... you guessed it, orange.

So I thought, I'm being a bit prejudiced here. Plenty of people like orange, if I make some jewellery with the beads I don't like, someone else might love it. And I grabbed the offending beads, some copper wire and some other bits and pieces and almost forced myself to make a necklace.

And you know what? I actually like it. I'd like it a whole lot better if it was purple, but I like it.

And just for Carrie, here's how I did it.

I mixed alcohol inks into translucent clay. Note that the colour may be different when baked, so you could  do a test bake of a tiny piece before you commit to creating the beads. Adjust the colour if you want to. I also added some gold glitter to the clay and mixed well.

I rolled out a sheet of the coloured trans on the thickest setting, and placed a sheet of copper leaf on top.

Then I rolled this sheet into a jellyroll cane, with the leaf on the inside. It can be difficult to get the clay to stick to the leaf but persevere with it. It doesn't have to be neat but you don't want air bubbles.

I squared off the jellyroll cane and cut off a piece for the focal bead. I reduced the rest a little and cut it into sections to make the square beads. I softened the edges by gently rolling the bead in my palms, pierced and baked.

I textured the focal bead with rubber stamps, a different one on each side. Once it was pierced and baked I painted on brown acrylic paint, wiping it off the raised portions of the design and leaving it in the impressions.

I mushed up the waste ends of the cane to make some irregular oval beads, which I flattened out, pierced, and baked.

The beads were tumble sanded and buffed to a dull sheen.

Next came the wirework. For the focal bead I made a spiral in a piece of wire hammered it a little, threaded on a small round bead and made a wrapped loop at the top. I made a simple loop either side of the focal bead and dangled the round bead and spiral from it.

Each other link started with a hammered spiral with a straight "tail". I threaded the beads onto the tail and closed it with a loop. The loop attaches to the next wire just after the spiral - the pictures show this much more clearly than I can explain.

Some copper chain and handmade copper fastenings finished the necklace off.

So I learned a lesson. Working outside my comfort zone is good - I created something that's not my usual style, but is still a nice piece, and will mostly likely have an influence on the way my style develops in future. I feel it's helped me grow a little as an artist, and that wouldn't have happened if I'd just thrown out those orange beads.