Further Adventures in Silver Clay

One of the nice things about Art Clay Silver is that you can set up at home with very little equipment. I only bought steel mesh for the gas burner, a metal bristled brush, fine sandpaper pads and some more clay. I had other bits and pieces at home already.

This was a quick one. I used an oval cutter i bought years ago for friendly plastic (turns out, I'm not so friendly with the plastic). Then I used a spriggy rubber stamp I have to put in the pattern. I used by regular letter stamps to press in my word of the year and fired it. I'm not 100% happy with it, but it was an experiment in using rubber stamps (I used vegetable oil to lubricate the stamps).

This one was made for a friend. It took 3 attempts to get it looking the way I wanted to, and there are still some flaws, but that is the joy of the learning process. I used a five petal cutter to begin the shape, but snipped out a piece from the ends and added detailing with a needle. I shaped it over my knuckle.

She can wear it with the bead over it if she doesn't want people asking her why her necklace says "try" all day.

This one was pure inspiration and play. I was thinking bubbles and pebbles and played around with techniques for shaping and joining them. 

I wonder what's next?

Adventures in Silver Clay

A couple of weeks ago I took the Silver Charm Bracelet and Pendant class at The Make Lounge in Islington. This has been a favourite haunt of mine since way back in 2007. I've lost track of all the classes I've done there, plus a party or two, and I can't recommend it enough. The classes are well levelled and organised for beginners to try out a craft, but they work well for somewhat experienced dabblers such as myself, too. This time they had the lovely Emma Mitchell in to teach Art Clay Silver. Do take a look at her website, her work is just up my street.

I managed to make 12 charms out of my silver clay, but on average you can expect to make around eight. I was surprised to find myself inspired, once again, by the sea. I am, at heart and by family, a Nova Scotian, although not raised there. Time and time again, the rocky shore creeps into my work when I am least looking. I ended up with a necklace with a silver pebble and a silver charm plus a bead (I've changed the chain from the one in class as I wanted more length). My charm bracelet has a silver shell, starfish and feather, spaced with silver pebbles and the pearl-like beads. There were casualities though, a broken feather and two slightly uglier pebbles, poor things.

I couldn't resist a little bit of autumn imagery either. I never can.