Sheer Black

Translucent polymer has really been enjoying a resurgence this past year. Much of this is likely due to the excitement over the high level of transparency possible with Pardo’s translucent clay as well as Rie Nagumo’s Enlightened Polymer Clay book which focuses quite a bit on translucent clays.

My fascination has been in the area of coloring translucents which, of course, diminishes the transparency, but you can get a beautiful luminous sheerness. Hélène JeanClaude who was inspired by Rie Nagumo’s book, went for mixing in black during her experiments with translucents and then she played with layering it.  Layering the discs below nicely varies the transparency  in the back-lit shot. Most of this translucence is lost when the necklace is laid out on on a solid background. I was thinking though that this kind of work would do well as dangle earrings where there would be the opportunity for light to play through the layers as the wearer moves about.

Hélène actually created these with Premo rather than the increasingly popular Pardo. Coloring the clay reduces or eliminates noticeable yellowing, which is a great solution for those of you put off by the yellowing that comes from baking but haven’t been able to get your hands on Pardo yet. However, a little yellowing isn’t such a bad thing sometimes. See what you think of her uncolored versions of this necklace here on her blog.