ART 410: Project 2: Update

After researching enameling more in depth, I realized that I wasn't going to be able to achieve the realistic look of fruit that I desired for my previous idea. Thinking about inner/outer forms that I could put together for an interesting brooch, I began to think about stone settings and faceted gems.

I have always been intrigued by faceted stones, and am becoming more interested in geometric shapes because of this. Something about them is just so beautiful, I love the way they reflect light!

Being a commuter student, and sick for almost the past two weeks I had to improvise with the materials I had at home. I found a set of acrylic gems at Michael's Arts and Crafts by the brand Tim Holtz. 

Luckily, the plastic packaging holding the gems to the cardboard package was the perfect mold to use!

As a test run, I melted candle-making wax and poured it into the mold. I chose the shapes that most appealed to me:

Now that I had my inner pieces, I had to decide how I wanted to showcase these. I looked back through my image research and was surprisingly inspired by the architecture. Some of these would perfectly showcase the gemstone I chose for example:

the dome at the top of this cathedral-

around-

these scalloped archways-

around-

more scalloped archways-

around-

Thinking about all of these scalloped edges reminded me of the outer edge of a lace or paper doily, so I did a little more research and came up with these images

With the architecture and doilies in mind, I sketched some designs and then created patterns in Rhino

These are going to be the templates for my brooches! 

I plan on piercing these out of copper sheet, setting the electroformed "stone" in the center

I either want to enamel the entire outer piece with white or, place the pierced design over a solid blank with the same basic outer shape and only place the enamel in the pierced out portions. Another option would be to place the pierced design over a solid blank as stated before, but use white enamel on the "lace" portion and turquoise enamel in the pierced portions to emulate more stones. Whichever option I choose, I think I want to keep the electroformed stone in its copper state as an inverse of what the typical stone and setting materials would be (example: a turquoise stone and a copper setting.)