Make it Monday! Bargello Waves Veneer - SO many possibilities!

A great way to create a veneer with depth and interest is to have lots of layers of things going on. For this project we'll make a beautifully blended striped sheet, then give it a wavy Bargello treatment. Finish up with a silk screened pattern over all that's sure to give your next piece amazing dimension. 12 Bar gel l o Waves Veneer Choose several colors of clay that are close together on the color wheel. Add in some metallic, and make sure you have darks, lights and medium tones.

Materials:

For my veneer I used 1/8 block each of Premo! Sculpey® Accents Sunset Pearl, Magenta Pearl, Bronze, Premo! Sculpey® Violet, and Sculpey® Soufflé Canary. For my orange I mixed together 1/16th block each of Premo! Orange and Sculpey® Soufflé Pumpkin. Other tools & materials you will need: Wavy Blade Clay blade Pasta machine or acrylic roller Deli paper Metal knob for burnishing, optional but useful, found at home supply stores

Instructions:

Condition each color separately, then roll it into a log. Bundle all these separate logs together into one log and give it a few twists until most of your stripes are less than ¼ inch wide.

Flatten with an acrylic roller and send through the pasta machine. Fold in half and send through the pasta machine with your favorite side out until you like the look of your blend. I usuallysend mine through the pasta machine only three or four times, I don't want to blend it too much.

Roll your sheet out on a medium setting, about 1.5 mm (#3 on an Atlas.) Trim the ragged side so your sheet is not quite as wide as your ripple blade. Roll out a sheet of scrap clay on a medium thin setting for a backing, it should be slightly larger than your striped sheet. Use the wavy blade to trim one edge off the striped sheet. Then line up the ripples and cut a rippled strip of clay. These can be any width you like, I make mine between 1/8 inch and ¼inch thick. When you are cutting, press down to cut through the clay, then pull the blade slightly towards you. This will make the rippled strip stick to the blade.

Now you can carry the strip, stuck to the blade, over to your scrap clay and place it near one edge. Pat it gently in place. Repeat to cut another rippled strip, but this time when you place it on the scrap sheet, shift it over one ripple so the stripes don't line up. Use the blade to press one rippled strip into another, fitting them as tightly together as you can. We can smooth out small gaps later, but it's best to get them as close as possible now. To release the blade from the clay strip tilt the top edge of the blade towards you at an angle.

Continue cutting and placing strips, offsetting them. Change the direction you offset every three or four strips. Otherwise you'll end up with a lot of unusable area. In addition to cutting rippled strips, you can position the blade to create round shapes Just make sure the thin bit of clay connecting them isn't too thin, or they may pull apart.

Continue until your entire sheet is covered. Place a deli sheet over it and burnish lightly to smooth out any gaps and unevenness. You can use your fingers, but to make it perfectly smooth I like to use a small metal cabinet knob. Make sure it has rounded edges.

It makes silk screening easier if you trim away most of the ragged edges. To add another layer of depth to your veneer you can either use a stencil or a silkscreen with paint or mica powders over your clay sheet.