To start the old work series, here’s a piece from quite a number of years ago that I still really like, but probably won’t fit in with the more focused theme of the new site.
Dimensions: Height=3″
This bowl was made for a “Polymer Clay Central” contest with the theme of Fire. It is a light bulb vessel, which means that the clay was formed over a lightbulb, baked and then the glass was broken out, leaving only the clay shell.
I started out by making a Skinner blend of black to gold to copper to black. I used the Premo metallics to get the full effect of the mica particles. I took slices of the blended clay and distorted and shaped them to make them look like flames. I laid these onto the black clay background layer on the lightbulb and used a brayer to smooth it. I shaped the top edge of the vessel to make it look like the tops of flames.
Once it was baked, I wet sanded the bowl from 320 grit until 2000 until it was very very smooth. (I also managed to sand my thumbnail almost all of the way through before I noticed it – OUCH!) I then buffed the bowl using my bench grinder to give it a high shine. At this point I broke out the lightbulb by carefully squeezing and tapping the bowl inside of a bag. I cleaned out the last few bits of glass with a dental tool and rinsed it out. Then I gave it a few coats of Future floor wax and put the bowl back in the oven for about 10 minutes to set the finish.
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