September Component of the Month REVEAL

September Component of the Month REVEAL!!

I'm so excited to share with you the creations of these wonderful Artisans!!

ENJOY!!

Monthly Winners

SJ Designs Jewelry

Kari Asbury

Shirley Moore

AJE Team Members

Caroline Dewison

Diana Ptaszynski

Lesley Watt

Melissa Meman

Linda Landig

Kristen Stevens

Jenny Davies-Reazor
Sue Kennedy

KristiBowmanDesign.com

KristiBowmanDesign.Etsy

September Component of the Month and Giveaway!

Winners have been announced HERE
Thank you!

Hi there Beady People!!! It's time for the September Component of the Month Giveaway!!

This month I made something new and I hope you love them as much as I do!!

I call them Goddess Vessels! They are good sized Focals made with Copper and White Copper in several different designs!

 I'll be giving away 3 of them to those that are randomly picked from the comments.

Let me know your preference in color and texture and I'll do my best to get you what you want!

Want to play along? Here are the rules…

• I will giveaway 1 Goddess Vessel to each of 3 winners selected randomly from those who leave comments below this post.
• Your comment must included your EMAIL address and a link to your blog, so we can contact you should you win.
• Please — only leave a comment if you can commit to creating a finished piece and blogging about it on the reveal date.
• The names of the 3 winners will be announced on Thursday August 28th.
• This giveaway is open to US and international countries, but please be aware that international addresses will have longer postage times… sometimes up to 3 weeks.
• The blog reveal will take place on Sunday, Sept 28th, 2014.

Kristi

KristiBowmanDesign.com

KristiBowmanDesign.Etsy

Saturday Share - Playing with Precious Metal Clay

If someone asked me to choose one new jewelry medium to learn, no matter what the expense, it would be a toss up, I think between lampworking and precious metal clay...both require extensive tools, kilns, materials.  Since I torch-fire enamel,  I happen to have some of the supplies needed for lampwork...torch, mandrels, glass rods, but no kiln.  I took a class ages ago and pick a glass rod up occasionally when I am sitting at my enameling station and make the odd bead here and there.  But since I have no kiln, it really isn't feasible for me to invest much time in that.

I figured precious metal clay would be out of the question as well, but, lo and behold I discovered PMC3, which can be cured with a torch...no kiln!

I wanted to try it, but it took some gumption!  This stuff is not cheap.  I finally dove in after getting a newsletter from a site that was offering a free texture sheet with any purchase.  I splurged on a 16g package..not the smallest, but definitely not a huge amount!

The meager contents - 16g

After receiving it and before playing, I watched a few You Tube videos to make sure I had the rules down...keep your clay well covered so that it doesn't dry out, make sure to keep all your tiny scraps. So, I got all my stuff together, made do with what I didn't have and held my breath!

I chose a small mold I had made for my polymer clay and made 2 small pieces.  Boy, this stuff is sticky...I know there is a special cream to keep it from sticking to your hands....if I keep at it, I will have to get some.  I used just a tad of olive oil like the videos suggested.  I went ahead and put small holes in the pieces, them left them to dry.

Here they are all dried out...now is the time to sand them or clean them up in any way.

Since these pieces were small, they didn't take very long to sinter at all.  The binder burns off really quickly, then you need to hold the piece at a glowing pink, but not glassy, for about 2 minutes.  After that, quench in cold water.  The pieces will be a matte, white color at this point, but after buffing/polishing with a brass brush, this is what you will get:

 Bright and Shiny!

After LOS...cool!

I thought they turned out great, so I decided to make some more!  Using some more molds I bought for polymer clay, and did small layered pieces.  

After drying and about to be torched!

All cleaned up and patina'ed!

After the patina, I put them in the tumbler for about an hour, which really softened the edges a bit and and enhanced the design.

These 4 pieces took about 2/3 of that chunk of clay shown earlier, so that amount is just enough for someone to decide it really isn't the medium for them, or really open new doors for a designer.  In my case, I was really happy with how these turned out and want to buy more clay so I can play some more, at least until something new catches my fancy!

Go play!

Melissa Meman

Melismatic Art Jewelry

Art. Life. Love.

PMC Class with Donna Penoyer

This past weekend, I took a PMC (Precious Metal Clay) class with Donna Penoyer.  It was at the Society for Contemporary Craft here in Pittsburgh, and the class title was Imaginary Sea Creatures in PMC.  I has asked if a newbie could take the class, and was told yes, but it really wasn't a newbie class!  However, I plugged along and thought I'd show you what we did.

 First we started out with an exercise making a PMC tentacle.  We made a form using epoxy putty, and then made a mold with polymer clay.

 We decorated the polymer after pressing the form, and baked it.  Using the PMC, and the putty form, we pressed the clay into the mold.

 This is my rough tentacle, after drying but before sanding.  You can really see how rough it it - I had no idea you had to sand PMC so much. 

 Here's my finished, sanded tentacle.  If I made another one, I think I would use a toothbrush or something to give the areas in between the suckers a brushed metal look. We didn't fire it in the shop, Donna is taking them to her studio to fire and we can pick them up later.  I'll be sure to show you how it turned out.  I'm hopeful!

After that exercise, we got into the class topic...making sea-like imaginary creatures.  She brought a lot of shells, urchins, texture sheets, etc. for us to use.  Here's where being a newbie was somewhat of a challenge - since I had no experience with this at all, I had truly no idea what I was doing.  Donna was very helpful, but probably I should have taken PMC 101 first.  I did do some sketching of things I thought I would make, and here's how it ended up.

 I took molds of three different types of shells, with the idea of using parts of each.

 We made armitures (structures to drape the clay on while drying) and then pressed our clay in the molds and created the piece.

 Here is my rough sea creature.  It did not turn out the way I drew it, but since it was my first time making anything, I didn't really care.  I was taking the class for the experience.

 Here's my sea creature after standing and adding a hole for the jump ring.  This one is a little bit rougher than the other one on the surface, as I'm leaving the texture from the shells.  I wonder how it will look when it's all shiny and silver?

There were more steps than I mentioned of course, but I can't give Donna's class away, now can I?  I did conclude that for right now, PMC is not really for me.  The expense of the clay, and the amount of time required sanding, makes it seem almost impossible to get into.  Perhaps as you get more experienced, the sanding time goes down, and I am sure copper clay has to be less expensive, but for now, I'll just admire things other people make with PMC.

 

Here's an example of Donna's art, which you can see on her web site.