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| Arizona Diamondbacks Baseball Necklace available for sale at MelodyODesigns |
My husband and I are staunch Arizona Diamondbacks baseball fans and our favorite player is currently Paul Goldschmidt. Last February, in honor of the opening of Major League Baseball, I had designed a baseball necklace out of polymer clay, complete with "autographed" bat, glove and dangling baseballs that could be ordered with an acrylic beaded chain in most team colors. The team colors for the Diamondbacks are Sedona red, Sonoran sand and black. Sedona red is the color of the red rock of Sedona and alas, neither it nor sand are colors that are commonly available in beads. I was unable to locate any appropriate beads and didn't relish the labor intensive work of making my own, so I didn't make a Diamondbacks necklace. However, I kept looking online and one day I found a bead company in Phoenix who had limestone beads that had been commercially dyed in the Diamondbacks' colors. Eureka, I now had the beads to make necklaces to celebrate my home state team that I could both wear myself and make available to other Diamondbacks fans!
One of the technically challenging aspects of creating the bat was that I wanted to make a teeny realistic Louisville Slugger logo as well as making a signed faux autograph on the tiny 2 3/4 inch bat. My idea was that customers could special order the fake signature of their favorite player, in addition to ordering the bead chain in their team colors.
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| Tiny bat with fake Louisville Slugger logo and custom ordered "faux autograph" of favorite player |
I needed a black pen to write on the bat; something permanent on polymer clay and capable of writing tiny legible letters. I ended up using a black Microperm by Sakura (01 thinner, 03 thicker, 05 thickest sizes) from
Markers Supply. I've been using the thickest tipped version (05) of this pen to sign the back of some of my pieces for several years. It has held up well over time and I've been very pleased with the choice. I highly recommend it for signing cured polymer clay pieces. There have been a few time when I've made an oops on the signature and immediately tried to remove the ink with alcohol. It's so permanent that, though the alcohol did cause the ink to fade a little, I ended up having to sand it off and start over. That's PERMANENT!
FYI I have found that the somewhat similar Pigma Micron COLORED pens by Sakura do not hold up nearly as well unless heat cured and gently sealed.
To read additional technical info about the
generic baseball necklace please click on this back post:
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| Matching dangling Baseball Pierced Earrings also available at MelodyODesigns |
