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From www.britannica.com:
Sgraffito (Italian graffiare, "to scratch") is a form of fresco painting for exterior walls. A rough plaster undercoat is followed by thin plaster layers, each stained with a different lime-fast colour. These coats are covered by a fine-grain mortar finishing surface. The plaster is then engraved with knives and gouges at different levels to reveal the various coloured layers beneath. The sintered-lime process binds the colours. The surface of modern sgraffito frescoes is often enriched with textures made by impressing nails and machine parts, combined with mosaics of stone, glass, plastic, and metal tesserae.
Sgraffito has been a traditional folk art in Europe since the Middle Ages and was practiced as a fine art in 13th-century Germany. It has been recently revived in northern Europe.
For this bookmark, I modified the Sgraffito concept with a technique I learned from Irene Coyer. I used Premo Pearl, Copper and Gold metallic clays. I ran them each through the pasta machine several times to get the mica to align into one direction. I cut five layers and stacked them together: gold, copper, pearl, copper and gold. I cut the bookmark from the stack. From the leftover scraps off the stack I cut the bookmark from, I sliced thin cross-sections and applied them at the top and bottom of the bookmark. Next, I cut two cross sections from the original gold sheet and turned them on their side to show the dark side (also known as invisible cane technique). I applied the cross-sections to the surface of the bookmark and then ran the bookmark through my pasta machine on the thickest setting. Before I baked the bookmark, I carved out the stars and the lines in the center of the bookmark and filled it with TLS (Transparent Liquid Sculpey) that had some fine glitter stirred into it. Then I baked the bookmark according to the manufacturer's recommendation. This is the result and came in Third Place for the July 2000 Challenge at PCC (Polymer Clay Central).
Click on the picture for a closer look.
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Copyright Colleen D. Bergeron.
Last revised: June 07, 2003.
