1. Roll a sheet of scrap clay on the thin setting of your pasta machine. Choose any cane, sheet of solid color clay or, like I did, good piece of mokume gane. We will use that "nice" leyer as a surface for our central piece of earrings.
2. Cover the base sheet with thin slices of clay of your choice. You should make a sheet big enough that you can cut 4 identical central pieces. Roll that sheet on the thickest setting on your pasta machine.
3. Take a sheet of plastic wrap and place it at the top of the sheet. Using a cutter of your choice and cutting over the wrap, cut 4 pieces. Plastic wrap will create a nice edges, not sharp, just a little bit rounded - perfect.
4. Put together pieces two by two, to get two central pieces, both double sided. Remember - we are making earrings, so we need to make not only nice front, but back as well.
5.Now, let's make frames for our central pieces. Roll a sheet of a clay in solid color that compliment central pieces, on the thickest setting on your pasta machine. Fold in half to get a sheet of a double thickness. Frame must be of the same thickness as central pieces. Cover the sheet with metal leaf. You can cover it completely and than slightly roll a roller over it to get a cracked effect. Don't roll too much as you don't want frames to be thinner than center.
6. Using the same method with plastic wrap, cut first the outside edge of a frame. Than, using the same cutter that was used for the center pieces, cut the middle. Take out middle from the frame and place central piece in the cut. Do the same for second frame. Note: don't throw away middle cuts. You can make another earrings from it!
7. Decorate with some beads. I used seed beads of a matching color. Although glass bead may stick very well to polymer clay, I just like to ensure beads stay where I put it - forever, if possible. Therefore, I always put a little bit of glue in the place where the bead will be. And like that for every bead.
8. It takes a lot of time if you're using small seed beads (like I did), but don't give up. It looks just great when you finish it!
9. I didn't like that sides of frames where "just" solid color, so I added a little bit of gold. Since gold leaf pencil that I have is really good, with just one stroke it leaves a solid line of gold. I find it a little bit to heavy, comparing to the rest of frame, so I sanded, just a little bit, using finest nail file.
10. I added some more glass beads, attached it all together and ....voila - here are my earrings.
Hope your enjoyed making this earrings.
If you have any comment, question, suggestion.... please send me an e-mail on mila@milama.rs. Looking forward to hear from you!
Yours,
MilaMa
