Mokume Gane & CaBezels

We've been busy with family visiting this past week and so I finally got around to finish off a few pieces I'd been working on.  I love working with the CaBezels and this time combined it with some mokume gane.  I saw this color combination on a table cloth in a restaurant the other day and had to mix some up while it was still in my brain.

   

I decided to make some beads from the mokume gane sheets and created this collar piece as well.  I love how the colors and pieces turned out that I am so tempted to keep this piece for myself ... we'll see....

Mokume-gane

Mokume-gane, meaning "wood-grain metal", is a Japanese metal smithing technique where layers of different types of metals are compressed and fused to create beautiful patterns.  This is another technique that we like to imitate with polymer clay as it can be done in so many ways with a wide variety of color combinations.

After selecting my clay colors, I make them in sheets all the same size, varying the thickness depending on the color, and then stack them.

   

I roll out and compress my sheets so they will fit through my pasta machine.  The stack is put through the pasta machine to compress them even more.  It is cut in half, stacked, compressed and rolled through the pasta machine again.  This is done one or two more times, sometimes adding silver, gold or copper leaf in between towards the end of the process like in the blue bracelet shown above.

The next stage is to impress the layered clay to create a pattern.  Here I've used a texture sheet with a floral design.  I have to use some sort of mould release so it won't stick in which I simply spray on water.

Using a special blade, I shave off the raised areas that the texture sheet created, revealing a pattern underneath.  I then flip these shaved pieces over and arrange them onto another sheet of clay creating a second design.

When I have my sheets the way I like them, I smooth them out with my roller and now they are ready to use in my designs.  Here I have some tiles ready to bake for my mosaic coffee table.

And more tiles that have been sanded smooth and ready to use.

Or how about some pendants...