https://www.cutoutandkeep.net/projects/the-graceful-dead • Posted by Charley H.
Alexa Chung. Model, presenter, TV personality, fashion icon and, of late, skull-bearer – of the porcelain persuasion. Who could not love her delectably individual style of designer-meets-vintage …especially when they can get the look for £5. Yes, 5 of our British pounds – a fiver, or less, if you’re lucky with charity shops. Intrigued? Read on – and all will be revealed… Alexa’s necklace was one among the many masterpieces of the Italian Jewellery house, Iosselliani. Its gotta-have-it cachet, I’d say, is down to its ingenious part-glamour-goth, part-vintage, part-precious-costume-jewellery originality (and 18k yellow gold to boot)… not sure if the original's worth the asking price tag, though.
Alexa Chung. Model, presenter, TV personality, fashion icon and, of late, skull-bearer – of the porcelain persuasion. Who could not love her delectably individual style of designer-meets-vintage …especially when they can get the look for £5. Yes, 5 of our British pounds – a fiver, or less, if you’re lucky with charity shops. Intrigued? Read on – and all will be revealed… Alexa’s necklace was one among the many masterpieces of the Italian Jewellery house, Iosselliani. Its gotta-have-it cachet, I’d say, is down to its ingenious part-glamour-goth, part-vintage, part-precious-costume-jewellery originality (and 18k yellow gold to boot)… not sure if the original's worth the asking price tag, though.
Save it! The Iosselliani original will set you back – wait for it – £850, I kid you not. Vogue can’t be wrong, after all, can it, dear fashionistas? That, in turn, makes it 170 times what the Chic Cheat solution would cost you, thereby making getting creative 170 more sensible!
You will need A necklace with a plain stone pendant - ch-check out your ch-ch-charity shop for some good bargains. My necklaces cost £2 and £4 respectively. Classic white Fimo clay About £2 from Hobbycraft. Blue Ink (optional) Contact adhesive Narrow pallette knife like the one pictured above:
You kneed it in your life… Cut out a blob about 3 or 4 mm thick out of your slab of Fimo and kneed it to get it soft enough to work with. What I find helps, at this awkward beginning stage is pounding it hard and slamming it against your desk until it softens… No, of course I don’t harbour violent or sadistic tendencies!
When your clay is nice and soft, cut it into a flat skull shape, about 2mm deep or thereabout, and no wider than the stone you have to fit it onto. You can also use your pallette knife to sculpt the sort of textures that the skull in the original has.
You can dab it with blue ink to make it look like the skull on the original necklace, but be very sparing or it may look cartoon-like. Bake your clay skull in the oven, for however long you’re instructed to – ahem – stick it in. If you get the Fimo I used, that’d be half an hour. Finally, after leaving your skull for about five minutes or so to cool down, glue it to your pendant with contact adhesive. And you should have something which looks like this:
…Or this