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.