Year of Jewelry, Week 17

I've been busy preparing for two shows on consecutive weekends, so I've been doing variations on prior designs.  These pendants are polymer clay, die formed, with handmade cords.

Week 15, Year of Jewelry

I love the retro pixelated cane (thanks Bettina Welker) and I love die forming (thanks Dan Cormier).  Here is my latest pendant using these techniques. 

The Year of Jewelry Project, Weeks 2 & 3

I made this polymer clay pendant and the earrings to go with it using a Retro Pixelated Cane (from Bettina Welker's tutorial).  The pendant was made by die forming using one of Dan Cormier's dies.  I needed the earrings to be long in order to show the transition from light to dark, so I used a custom cutter I made.

Workshop with Dan Cormier

This weekend the Southern Ontario Polymer Clay Guild hosted Dan Cormier teaching his Relief Beyond Belief workshop.  Die forming is a technique Dan adapted from metal work and he says "It's the easiest and most addictive system I know to make contoured and voluminous forms from flat sheets of polymer clay, and it remains my favourite way to create beads, buttons, brooches, and other three-dimensional objects in a range of shapes and sizes."

As part of the workshop, we received a special collection of dies to use in class and to take home for future projects.  Dan has a number of different die sets available with each one featuring a particular shape in nine graduated sizes.  The die sets don't seem to be on his website yet, but I imagine they will be soon.

This was a "process" class so we focused on techniques rather than creating a finished project.   You'll have to stay tuned to see what I make using die forming.  In the meantime, you can go to Dan's site to see his extraordinary work using this process.

Some examples from Dan's website: