Amazing Casting Products: A Beader's #Cre8time Delight... AMAZING Faux Egyptian Pendants by Tracy Alden

Tuesday, June 9

A Beader's #Cre8time Delight... AMAZING Faux Egyptian Pendants by Tracy Alden

Hello! Tracy here with another Amazing Casting Products inspiration post! One of my favorite pastimes and inspirations is to go see beautiful examples of ancient jewelry. One of my favorite jewelry mediums is pieces made from Ancient Egyptian Faience.

Ancient Egyptian Faience is the world's oldest known form of glazed ceramic. Ancient Egyptian Faience is not made of clay at all, but a type of frit, a mixture of sand, quartz, silica, calcite lime and a mixture of alkalis. Often crafted into beads, pendants, figures, tiles and other small objects, using push molds or sculpted by hand, then heated to create lovely glazed pieces of art. To the ancient Egyptians, it was known was known as "tjehnet" which meant brilliant or dazzling.

This got me thinking about how I could make something that looked like Ancient Egyptian Faience but without the need of a kiln? This is where Amazing Casting Products helped me turn a normal clay piece into something more akin to the lovely ancient work. Using real Egyptian Faience as my model, such as those in the above photo, gave me a good idea of what colors I wanted to match.

I started with conditioned polymer clay, stamps and charms

that were Egyptian themed and pushed them into the clay.

After curing the polymer clay by manufacturer's instructions,

I rubbed on a water based glaze and added light layer of Alumidust.

I then mixed blue and green Alumilite Dyes with Amazing Clear Cast Resin and carefully applied it on top of the pieces. The light layer of Alumidust creates a lovely shimmer under the tinted resin, replicating the look of real Egyptian Faience.