Just for Fun

When I was starting to work on the "Screw" necklace I came across this doll leg.  (I found it when I was looking for a bone from one of the grandchildren's old games.)

Since I took so long getting the other necklace started I felt I should do something extra for my customer.  So........ just for the fun of it I made this "leg necklace" in honor of the broken leg.

It was fun!

Just like fabric

My friend Carol Scheftic has been invited by Hadar Jacobson to be a charter teacher in her Accreditation Program.  Carol is a "big" fan of Hadar and has been working with her clays for a long time now.  So, when she said she would be teaching a class on using the powdered clays I jumped at the chance to join it.

It's not that I haven't worked with Hadar's clay.  Both Carol and I put off working with the base metal clays until some of the kinks were worked out.  (Not that there still aren't some problems, but not quite as many.)   I started out with the readymade copper and bronze clays but once I found Hadar's clay I never went back.  It has to be mixed with distilled water to make it pliable but it is much smoother and silkier than the other packaged clays.

It is this smoothness and silkiness that makes her clay perfect for the draping technique.

The clay is rolled very thin (1-2 cards thick) then folded and draped.

The clay can be left as formed or cut out with a cutter or template.

If using a texture, I found it best to roll the clay 3 cards thick first.  Then roll it to 2 cards thick onto the texture.  This draping technique really suits my design tastes (and it's fun to do.)  

Pete and I did our pieces in Carol's studio but due to time constraints we fired our pieces on Carol's new screened in patio.  

Check out Carol's blog for information on firing Hadar's clay.  

An older piece which I call "Tiny Dancer" (and was in a previous post) was created with Hadar's clay using the drape method.  This one was a free-form piece (no cutting from the shape.)

Big Bauble necklace

Painting layer upon layer of metal clay paste onto Kix cereal to make beads puts me to sleep.  (Although I did try it once...... ended up firing them before they were done and adding them to my scrap jar.)   I also like the look of natural leaves in silver, but again find it boring to paint them with paste.  (Got to find some other outlets for using my paste up.)

Using a core that will burn away in the kiln leaves a hollow bead, but there are also armatures available that don't burn out.  They're called bisque beads and they come in all shapes and sizes.  For the longest time I've had a few of those (and like lots of my tools) never got around to trying them.  I did do a small bead once though, covered it with paste and embellished it with paper clay.

There was about a handful of very large (honker size) barrel beads in my collection so I bit the bullet and began to paint.  Not sure how many layers of paste got painted on (I keep losing my way after the first layer.)  Then I added textured shapes of rolled out lump clay, syringe lines (which I usually sand down to square them up) and more punched out paper embellishments.  After firing the first couple and brushing them (this was when I was still using my brass brush) I noticed some paste wore off, so they got repaired and put back in the kiln.

Here is the result of that endeavor.  It's much bigger and chunkier than I usually wear (although I wore it for a couple of days and liked it.)  I keep trying to make my jewelry smaller and daintier but somehow I seem to be going the other way.  (At least my weight is going down, whew!)

Box pendant

Last Saturday I taught a box pendant class using a combination of techniques I learned from Gordon Uyehara and from reading Kate McKinnon.

This was the piece I created in the process of demonstrating the techniques.  I had a package of tiny fine silver balls and used those along with some syringe work to embellish the area with the pearl.  (Actually the need to do embellishing came about because I miscalculated when I drilled my holes for hanging.  The pearl was a little too centered for my taste.)  Oops, another design technique exposed.

The texture was created with my tear-away, mentioned in a previous post.

Probably a mistake

My plan today was to start working on my inventory (which I did.... sort of.) What I did do instead was reorganize my studio.

Now that was probably a mistake as I won't remember where I moved things. (I hate it when they do that at my supermarket!) But, I am in the middle of taking in my old desk top (actually under the desk) computer. It doesn't work well with the internet since my browser is compatible with practically nothing. So, I'm taking it to the studio so I can work on my class handouts and print out designs for Photo Polymer plates. (The lap top is so much nicer to carry around.) I still have to take in the keyboard and the printer. My husband helped me take the monitor and computer in today. The scanner made it to the studio yesterday. That's a lot of equipment and I had to rearrange things to make it all fit. (Things do look neater now.... how long that will last is anybody's guess.)

I just remembered the game "You don't know Jack" is on that computer. Guess we can play that while we're waiting for a firing. It's a riot.

My fourth Etsy post was way ahead of schedule today. I actually got it posted around nine PM.

(three hours ahead of yesterday.) I'm so proud!

Muscleman wanted

Copper clay is pretty; shiny and bright or when it's darkened with a patina. But......... it is a little tougher to work with.

I purposely put off waiting to use my copper and bronze clays (by now my bronze packages are probably dried up.) My friend and I decided that we would let others go through the learning stages and we would wait until all the kinks were worked out. (Didn't follow through on that plan!)

First off I didn't really want to run my kiln that long. A copper firing takes anywhere from 4-5 hours and a bronze firing takes 7-9 hours. Now I'm reading that these long firings will shorten the life of the kiln. If I decide to do lots of firings of these two metals I will get another kiln just for them.

Copper and bronze clay are dirty to work with. They stain the hands, require their own tools and a separate barrel for the tumbler. When sanding I definitely wear a dust mask (that's about as sexy as the magnifying head gear) and I have to scrub the work area down after each session. (house cleaning is not my forte'.)

Both clays have more memory than silver clay, so seams have to be carefully attended to or they will pull apart during firing.

Then there is the firing process. They are fired in charcoal inside a stainless steel container with a lid. (Which leaves a lovely black soot on the inside of the kiln..... more cleaning.) The container has to be raised off the kiln floor. The pieces should have one inch of charcoal beneath them and at least an inch above them. There are two kinds of charcoal, and each kind of clay works best with a specific kind of charcoal. Different firing schedules are recommended depending on where you look for information.

In earlier posts, I've talked about firing the copper (and some problems I've incurred.) For the most part, I've worked out some of those problems.

But now, I've encountered other problems in finishing my pieces. All sorts of copper findings are starting to pop up in the catalogues. If I'm using beading wire, copper crimps and crimp covers are easy to find. But, my latest piece looked best on brown leather cord. I didn't really want to go through the process of making my own ends (rather lazy there.) Finally I found some crimp tubes with loops and hooks. I use these all the time with my silver pieces. The only size available was 2.5 mm and I was using a 2 mm cord. The size difference works fine when I am using sterling silver crimps as they are easy to pinch in the middle with a pair of pliers.

Here in lies the problem. I need a muscleman to pinch them. I squeezed and squeezed. I jumped up and down. I took a screwdriver and hammer to them...... to no avail. There was very little give. So, I bit my lip and pulled out the glue (something which I try not to do.) Using glue in such a strategic place makes me nervous.

Still cleaning

The cleaning continues.......

This past week I spent many, many hours, trying to figure out what to do with a fairly large (actually to me it is down right huge!) piece. I made the piece probably about two years ago; mostly as a what if project.

When I was teaching, the last six weeks were tough. The students were tired of being in school and were more focused on getting out of school than on their assignments. It was a perfect time to introduce a new medium to them. So, we spent the end of the school year creating with polymer clay. (The bad thing about doing it then was how warm the room was. Not the best thing for polymer.)

Of course, I played with the polymer too. I made a couple of pieces that I used to decorate the tops of some wooden containers. One was in warm colors and one in cool colors. The design reminded me of a Van Gogh painting.

It was one of these polymer pieces that I used for an impression with the silicon mold. It was rather a large mold, but I used Standard PMC since it shrinks 30%. (Even still the finished metal clay piece is big!)

It was also my first try with Aura 22. I used the gold as an accent on the small circles within the piece. But I don't think the consistency was right as the gold came out rather lumpy. Aura 22 requires having a medium mixed in with it and I wasn't sure exactly how much to add.

I really didn't like the piece when it was done. So away it went to be hidden in a drawer. Every so often I would pull it out, take a look and put it back in. Occasionally I would ask someone for some input. It wasn't until Laurie Kulkulski suggested that I turn it on it's side, that I decided it wasn't so bad. A different viewpoint was just what was needed. So, I drilled some holes in it and put it back in the drawer.

Another year would go by before I would pull it out again. Every so often I would take a look, still not knowing what to do with it. But, some ideas were formulating.

I had it laying out in my studio, when Swan, another jeweler in the Transit, said she could see it curved. So, I did just that. Another couple of months went by while I kept trying to find the perfect beads to compliment the piece. (You won't believe how many different strands of beads I bought for this purpose.... most ended up in other pieces.)

Now I am not a beader and maybe that is why this was such a struggle. I finally finished the necklace on Saturday. Even then I had to go ask for help on how to keep the twisted strands from untwisting.

I'm still not sure it is finished. I wore it today to see how it would hang (even though it is not me.) It didn't hang quite the angle I thought it would and it might be too long. I really don't want to work on it anymore, but that is exactly what will probably happen.

But I'm still considering it as one more piece finished. Haven't opened a package of clay in over a week. (I think I'm having withdrawal symptoms though.)

Cleaning House

The process of making jewelry isn't always a straight road of designing and finishing a piece. Instead it is often a zig-zag process. (At least my approach is a zig-zag process.)

As I said in an earlier post, I do have a sketchbook full of ideas but most of my creative process is intuitive. (I design as I go, which is not the most economical method.) So, this method lends itself to lots of unfinished pieces. My goal this month has been to not open one more package of clay until I use up some of those pieces.

The little dove was punched out of a doubled piece of metal clay sheet. I didn't realize that it was not a solid piece on the back, but I liked the negative shape that showed up. When the dove was torch fired, little bumps showed up on it which interestingly were positioned well. I think there must have been a gap between the layers which is why it puffed up. I had a massive stone bead (don't ask me what kind of stone it was) that I glued it to. I named this piece "Wounded Dove". He's been through the war and survived.

The other piece was a water droplet, (actually there were three of them.) I tried several variations where I strung them on a chain, but that didn't work. Not only am I trying to use up fired pieces, but I'm also trying to reduce my inventory of beads. So, the turquoise bead and the water drop were a simple solution to achieving that end. The other two droplets became earrings to match the pendant.

Ready, Aim, .........

The new year is still over a month away, but I am making my resolution now. It's not the usual (although I need to make the usual as my pneumonia got me so far off track) but a jewelry business related resolution. (Actually I probably should call it.... updating my business plan!)

I was reading the blog of Babette Cox who sells personalized stamps for metal clay. Her site is http://www.babettecox.com/pnamestamps.htm. I have one of her stamps and am planning on getting more. (I just have to remember to use them and my .999 stamps. Darn I keep forgetting!) Anyway, she had an interview with Don Fredlich who was the guest speaker at the 2008 PMC conference. (His work is wonderful!) He told her that some people say Ready, Aim, Fire and that she was going Ready, aim, aim, aim......... It was time for her to fire. I thought that was a good way to put it. I think I'm just aiming too and haven't fired yet.

So, it's time for me to FIRE! Hence my new year resolutions (or my new business plan, it is that time of year.)

I AM ........

going to write those letters to the school superintendants to see if they will approve my classes for Act 80 credit for their art teachers.

going to take a picture a day of my jewelry for 30 days and post it every day on my Etsy site (it has been sooooo neglected.)

going to apply for the Etsy Metal Clay group

going to enter competitions

going to try my hand at a magazine article

going to check out more galleries for my work

going to begin work on Phase I of the metal clay masters registry (with my friend Carol)

going to check out more teaching venues (which I have already started to do.)

and I am going to finally get started on my Transit jewelry series which is based on the fabulous architecture of the National Transit Building.

Okay, does this sound like enough resolutions? I do have a year to complete everything, right?

Also, here's another piece of jewelry from my "water series". (LOL)

Lemon wedge

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I was combining my lemon wedge bead made during Barbara Becker Simon's class, with one of her handmade beads. It has been sitting on my bench ever since I got home. I'm not sure this is the final version, but it will do for now. It is much bigger than what I usually make or wear. Maybe it will be the beginning of a new me. (Nah!)

Greek column pendant

    Something about this pendant reminds me of an ancient column.  It doesn't look like any column that I use to teach to my students.  It's not Doric, Ionic or Corinthian.  It's just my own version and  I finally got a decent photo of it, so I though I'd share.