Mosaic in polymer clay

Well all this has a history.
A few days ago I had a vision of tropical beaches and flowers and I started creating a cane with all tropical colors in order to make a necklace.
When I was done, of course, I had a lot of leftover clay. It usually happens with canes. So I started putting it through the pasta machine in order to mix it and add it to the scrap clay pile.

Only that when the first sheet of it came out of the pasta machine, the swirl of colors was so beautiful that I couldn't bring myself to just junk it. But it was also too simplistic to make something out of it "as is". So I tried the bargello technique. The effect was so stunning that I made quite a few pieces out of all that scrap clay. Pendants, necklace beads, even ear rings.
It looks about like this:

If you don't know what the bargello technique is, I can recommend to you a very neat tutorial on youtube. It belongs to Gayle Thompson - and she has quite a few awesome tutorials. The bargello is something that can help you really get rid in a creative way of all that scrap polymer clay.


So anyway. I was almost done with these and I kept mulling over and over how to use this more - the mosaic-like texture of the pieces looked really intriguing. But on the other hand, it would be a Sisiphus work to place each 1 square mm piece one by one to create a design.
So I started looking for ancient mosaic art. I found a flower - well it had 4 petals, at least I think it was a flower not a four-leaf clover. As I kept looking at it I realized that I can create a color pattern with bargello then cut crosswise and then cut the shape of what I wanted. So this is how the flower came out - I've set it in a round medallion shape.

I think some kind of antique bronze setting will fit this piece - I actually made two and still have some scrap. Maybe I'll make a tutorial later.
Yes, I bake on a vase. I went and ransacked the local Goodwill store for things I could bake on, that would give me nice shapes and that could fit in my small electric convection oven.
I do like to bake things on a convex base. It makes them pop out a little bit without having to use a lot of polymer clay base. It also makes it possible to add an invisible bail in the back.