I like to travel light, so when taking a class, I tend to pare down the supplies and tools I bring from my studio. So when asked to bring various components for the project we are going to make, I usually bring a minuscule tin of goodies. As often happens, one only has an idea of what the class will entail from reading the class description and the list of supplies to bring. And then there is the time factor. How much can one accomplish in a few hours working with new techniques and designing a piece on the spot. Thus what you see in the first photo is the piece I made in Robert Dancik’s class, “Concrete: It’s Not Just for Sidewalks Anymore”. The closest I have come to working with concrete was grouting a mosaic project years ago. Robert is a great teacher and I learned a lot in his class. I was fairly pleased with what I accomplished by the end of class, but the pendant left something to be desired. Concrete is heavy and this piece is substantially sized. I also didn’t care for the way my embellishments sunk into the concrete and how their placement looked. After arriving back in the studio, I decided to redo the piece. I chipped out the cement, disassembled the piece, and torch patinaed the copper box. I added a gemstone teardrop and a polymer clay bead to the bottom coil, and twisted square brass wire around a coil at the top. Then I reworked the composition in the body of the pendant. I used the same pearl, but exchanged the polymer and bronze spiral focal piece for a one-of-a-kind resin “cosmic cabochons” (you can find a selection of these in my Etsy shop), and added two small bronze metal clay pieces, and a small shard of glass. I decided to use “KlayResin” epoxy resin clay in the color “Concrete Gray” that contains tiny gritty particles and looks like the real thing, but weighs less than cement. It has a working time of only 4 to 7 minutes so I had to move fast! I did a bit of carving on the surface after the clay cured. I wanted the pendant to have the feel of an artifact that had been chiseled from an archaeological dig. Of course, the bicycle chain bail would be a dead give away that it is definitely contemporary! The second photo shows the finished piece and I’m quite satisfied with the results!
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