Fine Silver Creations

So I spent one day last week working with Precious Metal Clay making some fun and beautiful new pieces. I have one corner of my studio dedicated to just metal clay; it has to be kept clean to work on the clay, and then it makes a real mess with the dust that results from filing. Here are a few pictures of my work space, me filing some pieces - note how gray the mask is just from a few minutes of filing - and then the pieces getting ready to be fired in the kiln.

Precious Metal Clay is just that - it is 99% pure silver, not sterling but pure silver, mixed with an organic binder and water to make it the consistency of play-doh. You manipulate the clay just like you would clay or play-doh, and you have to work fast because the clay dries out quickly and is way too expensive to waste even a morsel. Once it dries to a "leather hard" stage, you can file and use different grades of fine sandpaper to perfect the piece. Then once it is fired at high temperatures in the kiln, it burns out the water and binder and you are left with a fine silver piece of jewelry. They also make the clay in gold, copper and bronze. The piece taken out of the kiln is almost white. The piece then has to be filed and burnished, or tumbled in a tumbler, to bring out the shine of the silver. Today I will finish the pieces by adding liver of sulfter to blacken parts of the metal to bring out the details I've imprinted into the silver, and finish setting the stones I've added to a few. I'll take pictures of today's process and post pictures of the finished pieces. Stay tuned.....

So here are the pieces fired and out of the tumbler. They are shiny and pretty, but not quite ready. I have to set the stones, and then I want to add some liver of sulfer to blacken the silver, and bring out the details of the pieces.

So now they are blackened, and from there I have to hand polish using fine grit sandpaper, a dremel tool with a felt bit and rouge and/or a polishing cloth until I get the piece looking just the way I want it to.

So now they are 99% done - on some I need to drill holes to make earring charms out of them, and on a few I need to add bails, the part that your chain goes through.

On this one I set a ruby (created) cabachon

and this one was made using a real wentletrap shell as a mold. Leave me a message if you are interested in purchasing any of the above, or watch for them in my Etsy shop.