Making Gilded Leaf Pins

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of taking a workshop from Diane Villano.  Diane is a member of the Southern Connecticut Polymer Clay Guild, and has written several articles in various polymer magazines.  She was offering a workshop on imprinting leaves into polymer.  I've made leaf impression pieces in the past, but Diane had an approach that looked different from what I had done before, and I wanted to learn about her technique.

As usual, Diane was organized and had great directions.  The workshop was fun and the process easily produced results that made the participants pleased.  In the photo at the left, the piece with all the metallic colors in the middle is the piece I made in class.  The other two were pieces I made a couple of days later at home.

These have convertible pin/pendant backs so they can be worn as a pin or hung on a chain.  Diane had us work on black clay because she likes the effect the black clay provides.

I decided to see what the process looked like on colors, so made two pendants, one on a teal backing and one on copper.  The pieces on the right show the results. The look is a bit different from the black clay pieces.  It seems the black adds more contrast and intensity.  It probably all boils down to personal preference.

Either way, the effect is very pretty.  Of course, fall, after the leaves are off the trees, is not the best time to try this project.  I plan to re-visit the process in the spring with new leaves and more shapes.