Molding the future

In my SLK jewelry workshop, one of the techniques Jen Cushman taught us was using molding putty to make molds of favorite pieces, or maybe of something you'd really like to use in jewelry but don't want to part with, and then use resin to fill them and recreate the piece.

It's quite easy to do, and I made a bunch of molds of items that Jen had that looked gorgeous so I can use them in the future pieces.

Here are the molds ready for the resin.

You can't really tell what will come out of a few of them, but I have at least one to show you - the only one I made into a piece of jewelry already. See the one on the top right corner?

Here it is all made into a resin piece and colored with Gilder's paste.

I paired it with another component I made at the workshop using a new technique - creating hollow forms with resin paper. The glitter inside the bezel moves around with the movement of the piece.
Then I hammered some bronze wire till kingdom and riveted it, to break the shape of the molded resin and the bezel, since they're the same.

It's a really long necklace and large too. I don't think I'll be selling it, and maybe not wear it either - I think I'll just hang it in my studio as a reminder of an awesome trip.

The one thing I retained most from the workshop was to be more adventurous with materials and tools, and free myself from preconceived ideas of how things should look like. I was so happy that with time my wrapped loops had become so perfectly symetrical, and when I looked at Susan's loops and saw how "carefree" they looked and how that actually made the piece more interesting (at least in my eyes), it opened a new door for me.

We were making resin paper and I decided to use a leaf that was part of our kit to create a large riveted pendant - and played with fire and oil pastels to give it texture. I used eyelets on the paper and then wrapped to the hammered and riveted piece.

Another one to adorn my studio.