I studied a lot of opals from around the world before deciding that Australian opals from the Coober Pedy mines were the most beautiful- and the ones I wanted to ‘recreate’. Plus I was intrigued that 60% Coober Pedy residents live underground to escape the intense winter heat.
I built on my experiments making faux opals a few years back and a LOT of failed attempts more recently before I came up with these techniques. In September I demonstrated to my polymer clay guild step-by-step how I did this with easily accessible and inexpensive materials.