I made a pair of trousers from this wonderful fabric, designed by ‘Miss Moresby‘, and decided to use this design as inspiration for some polymer clay earrings.

I found the construction quite tricky – particularly keeping the flowers light, while incorporating layers of black and white. The top pieces are quite simple – I mixed colours that matched the fabric, and added small pieces of brown, yellow and black to a slab of grey, rolled it flat then cut out the shapes with a blade. I tried a number of solutions for the ‘trumpets’ – first making a solid shape covered in black clay and hollowing it out with a drill (still a bit heavy), then shaping wet packing peanuts as a mould (not great shapes!), finally making a hollow white shape by hand with the aid of a knitting needle to shape the inside, then painting with black liquid polymer clay before baking. Finally I used a lino cutting tool to make shallow cuts to show through to the white.

The stamens are black beading wire with crimps (an idea I picked up from an online workshop with Bonnie Bishoff). Some crimps are covered by the black and white circles. Others hold it all together and are embedded into the trumpets, held by a small amount of clay. The small loops at the top that attach to the jump rings are also beading wire secured inside the flower with crimps.