With the works of Sabine Spiesser featured on Voila! recently, I've got a number of questions about the Faux Cloisonne technique, which Sabine learned from me. (Thank you, Sabine, for giving me credit!)  Christine Dumont asked me to write about this technique for her site, so here we go.

As many of you know, classical cloisonne is an ancient metal-working technique, one of the types of enamel. To create a design, narrow strips of metal (usually gold) first need to be soldered onto a metal surface to create cells, which are then filled with glass of different colors. The resulting piece has a beautiful smooth surface with design created with luminous colors and defined by elegant lines.

A number of polymer clay artists tried re-creating this look in polymer clay. There are three challenges to overcome: how to create clear and shiny surface, how to obtain bright colors, and how to make the lines thin enough. My technique answers all these questions.

Surface: I developed it first in 2005, using Lisa Pavelka's PolyGloss to create thin, but clear finish on the surface of my pieces. It worked, but was not an ideal solution. With this product soon discontinued, I was forced to keep looking for another finish. After spending a lot of time (and money!) and carefully evaluating a number of dimensional glazes and finishes, I have chosen two-part epoxy resin EnviroTex Lite. This resin gives the best deep and clear finish I've seen. The resulting surface is durable and water-proof, and the price of this material is reasonable.

Colors: The colors are created with mica-shift powders. The resin surface makes them shine as if from within.

Lines: I am using regular craft wire, nothing fancy. The tricks are in shaping and applying it right, and that is what I discuss in great detail in my tutorial.

Speaking of tutorial, Faux Cloisonne was the first step-by-step tutorial, which I wrote back in 2005. It has been revised two or three times since then, reflecting the changes in my choice of materials and other things I learned about my faux Cloisonne process over this years. This tutorial (along with numerous others) can be found at my web site, http://eugenascreations.com

Many people learned this technique though my tutorials and classes. I love to see where they are taking it and how they make it their own. I wrote about the works of some of my students (including Sabine) in my blog:

	Sabine Speisser, Australiai
	Andy Pan - Rhode Island

http://eugenascreations.blogspot.com/2010/01/student-work-faux-cloisonne-i-received.html http://eugenascreations.blogspot.com/2009/01/isis-with-wings-faux-cloisonne-creation.html http://eugenascreations.blogspot.com/2009/03/student-work-this-amazing-faux.html