Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Simple brooch re-do

This month's PCAGOE guild challenge is "Re-do", or basically to revisit an old idea or project and improve it by changing the old piece or re-designing a new piece based on the same idea.  I didn't have a whole lot of time for this challenge, because as usual, I left it to the last minute and in that last minute I was sick with a cold. But I didn't want to mess up my streak of consistent entries (I think I've had an entry every month for the past 2 years + 2 months!). So I grabbed one of my older pieces that I wasn't quite happy with and quickly did a revision. Here's the original brooch design:


The original piece was designed around a piece of metal window screen that I had moulded into a dome using a jewelry block tool. I never quite liked the red on the outside of this piece, and as you can see above, that red portion ended up breaking... so I decided to pry it off and redo the outside of the piece. Unfortunately, when I pried off the red outer layer, the 2nd pink and purple outer layer also came off, so I lost more than I had intended.






I decided that a nice glossy black would compliment the purples best and I set to work with one layer of black, then added another layer. I decided that I wanted to make the edges of these new layers more organically shaped. I then added a touch of silver ink to give contrast to all of the edges. A coating of verathane added that glossy shine that I wanted.



I do like this version better than the first. I like that it looks more pod-like, but I'm still wondering if it needs something more... What do you think? Leave me a comment below. Voting opens for this challenge on December 1st and is open untill December 7th at midnight EST. I'll post a reminder here on the blog! 

2 comments:

  1. I like both versions but I get wanting to do something different. Have you thought of ripping the clay so the edges look torn? I really like that look and it might go well with the metal mesh. Just an idea.

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    1. Goodness it's been a busy month! I'm only getting to respond to your comment a month after you posted it... Thanks Line, for the comment! Actually, the edges of the black clay were raw edges, to give it a more organic feel. (so you had the same idea I had... great minds...) ;) The only problem was that I didn't want to enlarge the piece any further, so the clay was so thin that it ended up being kind of hard to see the raw edges, that's why I used the sliver ink to highlight the edges.

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