Water Lily Necklace

• Materials:
• Polymer clay
• Mica powders
• Glass beads
• Metal beads

I’m somewhat disappointed in the finished piece. But, they say you aren’t growing unless you are uncomfortable, so I must have grown quite a bit.

I have been learning from other artists and made this necklace inspired by Christie Friesen. Christi is many things I am not. Mainly, she is very casual with her clay. She allows clay to be itself and do what it does best. I am reminding of my college ceramics teacher in college, Piero Fenci. He used to say not to fight the clay to try to make it to do things it wasn’t meant to do.

This has always been a struggle for me. I want to control things. I want things to be exact. I over-plan. Then I want finished pieces to have a really natural easy feeling to them. You may see a problem in my logic.

I have been working on this necklace for a few weeks now. I found myself going to the art store repeatedly so I could get something I “needed” to finish. I think I was stalling.

This is my first full necklace. I’ve done lots of pendants. But, I’ve never strung a necklace after I made all the components. It was scary. I made beads. I strung beads. I picked out wire. I had to come up with a plan. It had to be a certain length. Lots of challenges.

Things that didn’t work out:

• The length isn’t right
• The gradient color of the flower isn’t as pronounced as I’d like. Although, it does look better in person.
• It hangs weird
• The focal beads are too bulky and the holes I created are cavernous.

Things I learned:

• New techniques for shapes
• New ways to look at blending colors
• I appreciate fingerprints more.
• What a crimping bead is
• It takes 2.5 episodes of Friends to string a double-strand necklace (if it’s planned out)
• The difference between the cheap wire and expensive wire
• How to plan out and string a necklace
• Boring, weird, funky, homemade beads can be really neat as a background
• I love metal beads
• I could fix a lot of the technical problems if I wanted.