Sparkle & Shine

The holiday season is upon us, and my clay thoughts have turned to things that sparkle and shine.  One of my favorite ways to incorporate sparkle into polymer is to use metal leaf.   I decided to make a Skinner Blend mokume gane stack using the "hills and valleys" technique.  This method uses translucent polymer rolled out as thin as possible and placed over metal leaf.  Scraps of metal leaf and translucent are pushed into the stack here and there.   This adds swirls and interest to the slices as they come off the stack.
Since I'd used a Skinner blend for the translucent clay, the slices fell into color groups.  This led me to use different colors for the bases. In the photos, you'll see purples, teal,  greens, and pinks.  The translucent allowed the background to show through, and the gold metal leaf sparkled in everything.

I also tried something new (for me) and imbedded gold ball headpins into some of the pieces.  I like the way the pins enhanced the gold leaf, and the bit of whimsy they add.

The purple pieces to the left are all covered with resin and the pendant is backed and outlined with a deep solid purple.

The two purple pendants below demonstrate the difference between a surface finished with PYM II and one with a resin surface.  The piece on the left has more sparkle than is evident in the photo.

Since I had some strips left, I decided to make a couple of my brass cuffs.  Because the cuffs curve so much, I wasn't able to use resin for surface protection. Instead, I applied several layers of Preserve Your Memories II.  This photo shows the shine from the PYM II more clearly than the photo of the two pendants above. The surface is pretty and enhances the colors and the gold, but does not have the glass-like appearance of the resin.