I make my silver jewellery using PMC (precious metal clay), which is basically tiny silver particles in an organic binder - not actually 'clay' as such. While it's wet, I roll, shape & texture the piece, before leaving it to air dry.
You can use almost anything to create a texture in the wet clay, I have used leaves, lace, seedpods, straws, toothpicks.....& I've also made myself some texture plates & stamps. You can see some of the plates in the photo above & the photo below shows some of my stamps, all made out of polymer clay.
Once the clay has air dried (at this stage it's referred to as 'leather hard'), I can refine the piece. I sand the edges to make them smooth & attach the bail (for pendants). Sometimes I embellish the piece further, by carving or adding raised decorations.
I also set many of my pieces with lovely sparklies - lab created cubic zirconias. I have lots of different shapes & colours....
Once I'm happy with the finish, I fire the pieces in my kiln. The pieces in these photos got fired last night...I'll take some photos to blog soon :)
love your "sparkley" photos!
ReplyDeleteInteresting process. The clay looks so dull before you fire it.
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