Project #3 Pinched Petal Necklace

There are many ways to play with this project.  Jeanette Kandray sent a photo of her  necklace on the collage that inspired it.   Its not a rainbow skinner blend. Instead it is more of a value study from the dark purples though the pinks with the yellows of the collage captured in the yellow used for the center cane.   Note that Jeanette chose not to give her cane a final wrap.  This gives the cane slices a softer feeling more in line with the overall appearance of the collage.

Terje in Estonia photographs her pieces on white tableware.  Her pinched-petal necklace looks as if it is crawling over the plates. Very fun!

Weekend Extra Exercises

1. Try changing with the composition of the cane by using different colors for the center of the cane and for the wraps or try not using an outer wrap at all.

2. Make a skinner blend using a variety of colors from your collage – not just your version of magenta, yellow and blue.

3. Experiment with stringing the petals in a variety of ways. Here is one of my necklaces from the book restrung  in a different way. Instead of trying to keep the petals in the order of the rainbow, I purposely split the petals into seven color piles and rearranged them so they were not in rainbow order. Then I strung the petals by picking up one from each pile in a repeating pattern. The color flow is gone. Its a very different project!

TIPS

If you have a light colored collage and  made your rainbow skinner blend from pastel colors you may want to flip the value contrast in the center cane by putting a darker color in the center and wrapping it with a light color.

If you have more petals than you need for a necklace, remove every fourth or fifth petal along the line. You may have enough extra petals to make earrings or a bracelet.

FAQ’s

1. In the instructions you say to use “your” black and white. What does that mean?

Sometime black and white are too harsh for a palette and we recommend making a custom “black” and “white.”  For my palette in the book,  black is a dark purple brown and my white is cream colored.

2. Why are my cane slices cracking when I pinch them?

Sometimes this is caused by cutting the slices too thick. Try cutting very thin slices and see if cracking is still a problem.  Some clays are more brittle than others before baking and it doesn’t matter how thin you slice it.  If your petals are  still cracking, it helps to warm them up before pinching them. If you have warm fingers, you can do this by squeezing the cane slice between your thumb and forefinger for a few seconds before pinching. Just don’t do what I did when I wanted to hurry up the process. I decided to lay out my flat slices on a food warming tray, which baked them all  before I even finished cutting all the slices from of the cane!

Another reason the slices might be cracking is that you waited too  long after making the cane to cut the slices. Each clay sets up at a different rate. Its better to try slicing too soon than too late. If the cane is still too “squishy” to make clean slices just wait a little longer.