Virtual becomes Real - part two

Obviously, it goes without saying, that I am smitten with silver as a material.  It gleams back at you with a simple purity that is beguiling and beautiful.  As for the myriad of textural manipulations you can apply to its surface - well, I have yet to exhaust that creative avenue.

With all of this in mind I was surprised at how much I enjoyed working on this second pendant inspired by Sharon's (of My Passport to Style fame) pinterest board.  I did not have a big chunk of natural turquoise stone to work with and so I made my own from polymer clay.

Dealing with a pure hunk of colour was so different from my usual work with silver.  Creating a gently faceted surface by slowly sanding and filing away the oven baked surface made this nugget come to life.

On the back plate I layered up a few fabric textures into the metal and expressed the rivets (as before in the first piece) although this piece needed less of them.  With this turquoise pendant I wanted the vividness of the colour to dominate - the details all needed to be subservient to this.

What a great challenge this has been!  Thank you Sharon for setting me this virtual commission, I've loved every second of it and I'm looking forward to expanding these initial ideas into a new series of pieces.  You can read Sharon's second post on my work here.

Watch this space for further developments!