We have a soft spot in our family for bolo ties. My Uncle used to make us metal sculpture versions. My dad and I used to mount rocks we polished for bolos.
When my brother mentioned that on one of the cruises they went on that “gentlemen had to wear ties” for two dinners and he hated ties, I decided to make him bolos. You can read the post here: https://synssculpeyblog.wordpress.com/2014/06/05/tbt-bringing-back-the-bolo/
Bolos give me so many options for wearing – the focal piece can be centered wherever I wish – up high, down lower and then I have the ends to add even more clay or metal fun!
My bolos are often made out of scrap sheets of clay that I push into the Sculpey cab mold after back-filling with more scrap. Depending on the age of the focal sheet, I will often get a crack in it from the pressure of the mold, so I started back-filling with a contrasting color and saying “I meant to do that!” when I removed it from the mold and saw the cracks.
Those beads at the bottom are solid metal and add just the right touch of weight to the ends. I use the standard silver bolo backs glued to the back of the focal piece.
I used the scrap left over from cutting out the pieces for the focal beads to create the clay pieces for the end ( I call these the “swing pieces”). This was inspired by one of my 3×3 images of a street grate.
Most of the cording is the 3 mm nylon cording from Fire Mountain. Sometimes I use multiple strands of a smaller cording.
Both of these bolos were created with scraps from color mixes!
This one is my current favorite bolo, created with textured, foiled and embossing powdered clay. I dug through my Antique Copper finding drawers for the end pieces. (thereby justifying my hoarding of every little bead and bauble I come across).The bottom swing pieces tie back to the companion pendant I made.
