Cameo is the method of carving an item of jewelry. Traditionally, cameos are made from three main carving materials such as: glass, shells, or agate. They have dyed strong colored layers, but the most common colors for two layers are white on black, white on blue, and white on red-brown.
Recently, many artisans consider the polymer clay and porcelain as good alternatives to use in creating cameos. You need sharper tools and more appropriate base materials if you want to have a nice clean finished product. Polymer clay jewelry is inexpensive and material costs are kept down.
Prepare at least two colors of polymer clay, commonly used are ivory for the cameo part and darker color contrast for the background. You can mix some ivory canes or balls in some darker color clay to have marbleized or shaded background. Just make sure that the clay you want to is well conditioned. Mostly, molds don’t require a release agent, but if in case sticking occurs, try to spray the sticked clay to the mold with water or dust it with corn starch.
Take a small amount of ivory clay and place it by pressing it into the cameo portion of the mold. You can use the paint brush handle or a chisel headed clay sharper in tamping down the clay. Just work carefully and slowly to get all the cameo’s detail. Preferably, leave some convexity to the ivory clay.
You can leave a thin section of the ivory to create a beautiful translucent filmy look.
Smoothing the edge of the design is the most important step in the level of cameo making. Smooth edge is very important because when the dark clay base is added to the mold, this will give you the nice sharp edge you wanted between the cameo and the background.
Make a proper thickness for your mold by rolling out a small piece of the background clay. Press the mold gently on top of it to make a shape mark for cutting. Then, cut the background and lay it into the mold. Tamp around the edge and gently work until you reached the center, just apply less pressure when you are at the cameo part, in this way you can avoid ooze to the ivory clay.
If you notice that the clay is not well leveled, just gently put additional background color to top it off. In leveling the back portion, you can use the paintbrush handle or the clay sharper. And lastly, bake it. Learning how to use jewelry making tools, their proper usage will not only help you learn how to improve craftsmanship but will make your work faster and more efficiently. All great craftsmen learned slowly and took many years to become great artists. Knowing your tools will help you become better faster.
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