Searching for a Voice...

This year I have endeavored to step out of my box as a jewelry designer/artist and try new mediums.  As I have documented here previously, I have new found love of clay...polymer and metal!  There are so many possibilities to create unique pieces.

So far, everything I have created with these new-found loves were formed/textured using store-bought molds/stamps, or molds I created using 2-part mold making medium and found objects. There are several great posts here on AJE delving into that process.

Earrings I made with my copper and silver  metal clay components.

I look at the results, and while I am happy with them...they turned out great...I feel like something is missing. I rolled out polymer clay/copper clay, stamped it, sanded it and cooked it per manufacturer's instructions. But I still need to make them mine!  After going back in the archives I found a couple of posts by Jenny and Diana about stamp carving...

I decided to give it a try, so I went to Michael's and bought some carving tools.

Speedball Linoleum carver and Speedy-Carve material

As you can see, I already had some designs sketched out, albeit not the most original ones....those will come with some practice though.

Here are my 1st attempts...

The partially done flower was the very 1st try, and I started too close to the edge, but guess what, it is my favorite!  I am going to redo it bigger and with more detail.  Here are some polymer clay pieces I experimented with.

Next, I wanted to see how it worked with metal clay.  Here is a pendant almost ready to fire!  I'm going to be firing a batch of white copper clay today!  Woo Hoo! Wish me luck!

Then I decided to try my hand at carving directly into the dry metal clay, like some of the masters, such as Celie Fago.  Again, not baked yet and a bit free-style, but we will see!

Will show you how these turned out another day!  I'm not sure if this was what I was searching for in finding my own voice with clay, but it is definitely closer!

Melissa Meman
Melismatic Art Jewelry
Art. Life. Love.

Carving Rubber Stamps

Back on the 18th, I took a trip to CREATE Mixed Media Retreat in Somerset, NJ with my friend Linda.  I signed up for a stamp carving class and Linda took a jewelry workshop.  I wanted to learn stamp carving with the hope that I could somehow transfer the skill to my beads and pottery.

The first thing Julie (our teacher) had us do was carve a heart.  She gave us some tips and tricks for carving curved lines.  My heart turned out okay.  I wasn't super impressed by myself but then again, it was the first stamp I had carved in a few years.

We had a full class of 24-25 students and I was the ONLY jewelry person in the bunch.  

I realized after carving the jellyfish stamp in class, that these would not be deep enough to press into the clay.  However, he would look really cute on my "thank you" tags that I send with my orders.

As you can see in the photo above, I've been playing around with some other designs.  Stamp carving is VERY addictive.

AJE contributer Karen Totten, suggested I take my carving skills and carve some stamps out of clay and bisque-fire them.  Why didn't I think of that?!? They'll be deeper and then I can press them directly into the wet clay. I'm also planning to carve more rubber stamps and then turn the prints into decals which can be fired on to my pendants.

The wheels are turning!  I feel inspired again and that makes this workshop worth every penny.

Diana P.
Suburban Girl Studio LLC