Besides all the crochet hooks, which are proving really
popular, I decided to try to work out how to do polymer appliqué. First of all
I had to find out what this beautiful technique was called, which took a bit of
doing, but I had that ‘Of course!!!’ moment on discovering it was actually
Polymer Applique.
This is the thing with polymer clay, you can use it to mimic
so many other techniques usually used in other media, such as the Mokume Gane
used in Japanese metalwork, which easily lends itself to clay. This has a
result not dissimilar to embroidery.
Now, usually once you start searching the internet, you can
usually find instructions on just about anything, but I found nothing at all,
which was frustrating. Not even the Russian blogs mentioned any method,
although there were plenty of stunning examples. (they are so good over there
aren’t they?) There were a few paid tutorials, but as usual I like the
challenge of working it out for myself. However, by chance I came across a blog
which showed pictures of appliqué work at a meeting. No detailed instructions
but enough to tell me roughly how it was done. The only tool really needed is a
needle-tool, used to press the tiny petals and leaves into the clay base,
adding fine shape and texture.
After a bit of practise, here are the results.
All of this is very time consuming as each petal and leaf is applied individually, with a fine needle tool, but I found it was more than worth it with the end result.
