Technique: Homemade leather-texture clay pendant
Win: Yes
Challenge:
- To create a Fimo-style leather texture clay using a “half-baked” mix of gold clay chopped into small pieces and blended into green clay
- To get the mixture to behave like a workable, unified material rather than a crumbly rebellion
Lessons Learned:
- As expected, the mixture needed clay glue to bind everything into a cohesive ball
- The resulting clay was difficult to roll out—sticky from the glue, yet simultaneously brittle due to the added fragments
- Balancing flexibility and structure in a custom mix is more delicate than it first appears
Confidence Level: 8/10
Notes:
- I added surface detail using leftover cane from the translucent wing project, which brought an unexpected continuity between pieces
- This experiment feels like the beginning of something—there’s real potential in refining this “homemade leather” approach
