Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Something old is new again!


Like many women, I love cameos. Old ones, unusual ones, face ones, even bird or flower ones.

As a sculptor, they all have one outstanding draw for me.... they are sculptural. Some slightly sculpted and some deeply sculpted.

One of the vintage cameos in my collection was made of Bakelite, a material from the 40's, an early form of durable 'plastic'. The cameo upper left is a part created using a mold that was pulled from the original cameo. The problem, over the years, the original cameo detail has 'blurred'.

Wanting to remedy this and bring greater detail to the design it seemed that the best thing to do would be to try to determine the underlying design and try to restore it.

It has been a long time since I've done much micro sculpting and my eyes are not what they used to be however, this would not keep me from trying. The picture, above right, shows the uber-restored details and the slightly enlarged background.

Next, the cameo will receive an appropriate bezel (setting) that will be part of the finished design and it will become part of a new mold of re-sculpted cameos in a variety of sizes.

Left is an image colorized in Photo Shop showing how the finished cameo might look if the details were molded of white polymer clay and the mold then filled with a soft purple background.

Now, back to work!

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