a bunch of brooches...

...are the results of my recent experimenting with polymer clay. I'm quite pleased with the results.

My original idea was for the buff coloured ones, with green or autumnal leaves (I really like the cream/buff colour I got in my second batch). The dark ones were really only came about because the purple clay is new & I wanted to play with it.

I used a mixture of leaves from the garden - salvia, jacaranda, geranium, mint & tree-that-I-don't-know-the name-of (it has these seed pods). I pretty happy with most of them, though I probably won't use the mint again.

Once they were baked, I painted them - green or orange/yellow (autumnal) for the cream, as I said. For the black & purple ones I used metallic paint. It's a bit hard to capture properly in the photos, but I used a combination of silver, copper, pale & rich gold. And a couple of coats of varnish to protect the paint.

If they look vaguely familiar it's probably 'cos I've shown bits of them before - only here, here, here & here though.