February 2015 Component of the Month Reveal

Hi and welcome to the February Component of the Month Challenge/Blog Hop! I had the honor of providing the components for this month, and I chose to create metal clay pieces. After getting a kiln last year, I have been playing with copper and white copper metal clay and am really loving it. For this COM, I decided to carve a rubber stamp and used it as a starting point for all the pieces. It all started with this drawing...

As much as I loved the dots around the design, the carving tool wouldn't really work for them. For the metal clay pieces with extra holes, I used a drill bit while the clay was leather dry.

I hope you will go and show some love to those who have created designs using them!
Here are the participants.

Guest Participants:

Michelle Mach
Patty Miller
Divya N

AJE team:

Jenny Davies-Reazor
Susan Kennedy
Melissa Meman
Rebekah Payne
Lindsay Starr
Kristen Stevens
Francesca Watson
Lesley Watt

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

Combining Copper Clay

It occurred to me a couple of days ago that I should try combining the regular Copper Clay and the newer White Copper Clay so that's just what I did. I had it in my mind it might look a bit like Shibuichi and I think with a little more practice it will.

Please excuse the terrible quality of the work in progress photos,

 the lighting at my work station is not intended for photography.

I started with something very simple,

 lay a sheet of copper on top of a sheet of white copper and make a jelly roll.
I remembered way in the back of my brain from a class long long ago that when combining clay like this you should have one a bit thicker than the other. I chose to make the White Copper clay the thick one. I made it 7 cards thick and the regular Copper Clay 4.

Take slices from it and flatten them out.

I would roll one direction then turn it and roll the other direction,

I was not aiming for a perfect circle.

I made these 4 cards thick, I think next time I might go for 3 cards thick.

For those who might not know what I'm talking about

we measure clay thickness by using regular playing cards.

Tape 2 cards together, tape 3 cards together and 4 cards etc. 

Personally I use almost exclusively 3 or 4 card thicknesses, if I need more I just stack them on top of one another.

Here they are dry and almost ready for the kiln!
Just have to decide where to put the holes.

 And below here they are out of the kiln.

I LOVE the result

I love the way the metals alloyed to create a t least one more color,

exactly what I was hoping they would do.

My favorites of the finished pieces.

The things I would do differently next time I try,

Make sure the 2 pieces of clay have a solid connection to avoid the cracks

Not that I mind the cracks but I think a little more care would improve the end result.

Copper......Mixed Copper/White Copper....White Copper

I took the unusable ends of the jellyrolls and mushed them together.

I love the resulting color so I'm going to experiment more with mixing the 2 clays

 together to form this wonderful gray.

I'll be playing with the recipe to try to get a more distinct color.

Kristi

KristiBowmanDesign.Etsy

KristiBowmanDesign on Artfire

Patina and stuff

I've recently been playing with White Copper and decided to see how it took different Patinas and colors compared to regular Copper. I hope you enjoy sharing in my experimentation.

This first piece is actually regular Copper that I sprayed VerDay Patina on some time ago.

This is White Copper that I used Gold Gilders Paste.

Regular Copper Clay with Coral Gilders Paste.

White Copper Clay with Coral Gilders paste.

Regular Copper with Patina Gilders Paste.

These White Copper pieces have Patina Gilders Paste. I can see I need to clean out the holes a little better, but I love the look!

White Copper with VerDay, I just sprayed these this morning and they take up to 48 hours to come to their finished color. I like the look so far so I hope the Patina gets even deeper.

VerDay on regular Copper. Again it needs more time to reach it's optimum color.

Click HERE to learn more about VerDay.

I really wanted to test some Liver of Sulphur on some of the White Copper but I could not find it!!

Here's what the White Copper looks like all by itself, no coloration at all just fired, tumbled and this is it!

This double star is one of my favorite new textures.

Love this Triple Star too!

Tribal Mask

My interpretation of a Buddhist Coin or Mandala.

Almost all of these textures today have been created on Scratch Foam.

I really love making original textures!

Kristi

KristiBowmanDesign.Etsy

KristiBowmanDesign on Artfire

WHITE COPPER

Customers within the European Union: Please be aware that this item contains nickel and may not be in compliance with EU regulation EN1811-2011.

http://media1.riogrande.com/Content/White-Copprclay-MSDS.pdf