Tinkie A.D.

A bridge between the hands and the heart…

Well I have to admit, I have been a very bad blogger. So sorry for not having posted here in so many months. Since Trinket passed away in August I have been a bit emotinally messy at times, but now that Christmas is over and her bithday which was New Years, I feel ready to muscle down and get some stuff done.

So the latest is my adventure into Metal Clay. When Trinket died I really felt compelled to have her close even if it was just her ashes. Years ago when I first learned about Metal Clay I wanted to make a wearable urn to put the ashes of two of my bunnies, Minnie and B in. Well life usually gets in the way of such plans and it never came to be. Finally over the holidays I took the plung and bought a small manual glass kiln and invested in a wack of starter tools and a couple hundred dollars worth of clay to get me started. A wonderful friend from Bunspace donated her left over clay supplies and some wonderful gems for me to experiement with. This was great because initially I thought I would just work with the Art Clay 650 slow dry but I found that PMC standard is fabulous because of its large amount of shrinkage. So now I’ve come to realize its best to have a variety of clay types to work with depending on the project.

So my first project was a pair of earrings made from the left of supplies my friend gave me. First I had to reconsistitute the dried up clay by chopping it very fine with a tissue blade and then I mixed water and “Paste Maker” (in my reading I understand Lavender Oil will do the same thing) to the dried shavings. I then mashed it up with a pallet knife until it formed into a clay. Not ever even having felt what the clay should feel like, I just kept adding moisture until it felt easy to form and maintain its moisture.

When it came time to deal with the issue of a bezel to hold a beautiful topaz I wanted to use, I realized it wouldn’t be safe to fire the gem in place, but had to add a fine silver bezel. My first attempt was pushing the bezel into the clay and then fire. Well I’ll never bother doing this again. When the clay shrunk it created a huge gouge along the inside of the bezel and huge lump in the centre that held up the stone so I couldn’t set it. So hubby and I had the brainiac idea to use a dremel to drill out the centre. What ended up happening was that the dremel kicked out and took big gouge out my bezel. It was a blessing!! I ripped out the bezel and used a file to smooth out all the mess and I used some slip to attack a new bezel to the already fired base. No shrinkage and it resulted in a nice neat seam. I will always do it this way from now one. Live and learn. So here is my very first attempt at working with Metal Clay

They may not be perfect. I think my finishing needs work, but I am pleased with this first attempt. Metal Clay crafting is not fast but I thrilled with the possibilities.

These Topaz earring were made wth PMC standard Metal Clay

Tags: fine silver, metal clay, topaz earrings, twighlight topaz

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 14th, 2010 at 9:07 pm and is filed under Laura's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.