Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Imitating Turquoise

The most unique thing about polymer clay is how you can create with it to imitate so many types of materials such as semi-precious stones.  I think this is one of the aspects that most polymer clay artists enjoy the most.

My favorite stone to imitate is turquoise.  I love how it can look so much like the real thing yet not have the same weight that the natural stone has so is more comfortable to wear.

Here are a couple of sample pieces we created using this technique.  The one below has the "turquoise" embedded into a focal pendant and strung with "turquoise" beads each formed by hand.  The square beads in chili red were also hand crafted from polymer clay. 


This collar style necklace is one of our favorites and even though it looks heavy, it is quite lightweight due to using the polymer clay rather than the real stone.  The collar piece is strung with our own rondelles in black (see our tutorial we posted earlier) and some of our new handcrafted heishi beads using the same turquoise.  



3 comments:

Moushka said...

Surfed in from the Clayamies group - I'm new. Love your turquoise collar, very beautiful, and it looks so wearable because of the light weight. I hate the weight of natural stone beads. So many things to try!

Cindy Lietz, Polymer Clay Tutor said...

Making Faux Turquoise is so fun isn't it?! I love the surprise when you sand away the paint and sand to reveal the veining inside. Just wonderful!

Love both pieces! They are simply gorgeous!

2 Good Claymates said...

Thanks so much.

Yes Cindy, I love to make the turquoise -- I love how you described it -- Dave still can't believe there is real dirt in it! lol

Actually my collar piece just sold. Had someone visit us yesterday and she tried it on and for her it was love at first sight I guess. She commissioned me to make some earrings now to match.