I'm Going to School!

I need to clean up a few odds and ends here.

A few posts ago, I talked about the Silver Paste Class I took. You also may recall that my fabulous camera has pooped out on me, and is somewhere being fixed, I hope. So I took my handy, back-up, tourist, not-for-professional-photography-purposes camera with me to class, and snapped a few shots, and here we go!

The first step was painting several very thin coats of the silver paste onto the leaf. This photo was taken after 2 coats, before my gingko leaf started to reject the paste!

After all the paste is applied, the leaves were fired in the kiln. It is hot enough, and retains heat well enough, during this short firing period that the lid can stay off during firing.

You know I love to take the picture of the exact time the organic binder burns off! All the other students' projects are shown, too. Theirs are almost done, because they didn't have problems getting the paste to stick to their leaves, and they didn't have to keep starting over!

My finished gingko leaf looked a little plain, so I added an off-set garnet, and refired it. Also shown is my back-up geranium leaf, which broke during firing because I used so much paste on my gingko that I didn't have enough to adequately coat the geranium.

Most people can't tell the geranium leaf is broken 'til I point it out, but it is - there on the upper right, the leaf should curl up to meet the nicely curling fan on the upper left.

Meh.

And now a little business. Sales are booming over in my Etsy shop. (Yay!) I have several new things I'd love to list, but I can't, unfortunately, because I have no way to photograph them until I get my camera back. So I will keep relisting for awhile.

Meanwhile, I leave this Sunday for 2 weeks at William Holland Lapidary School. I love going to William Holland! There are so many friendly, talented people there, and I always come home renewed, refreshed, and full of new ideas, not to mention brimming with freshly learned techniques. I have never gone for 2 weeks in a row before (I attended for 4 weeks last year, but they were spread out), but with the price of gas, and the long drive, I decided to do it this way this year. My only regret about this arrangement is that Bailey will be at the "doggie hotel" for the whole 2 weeks (Ssshh - he'll hear us!)

I had originally planned to close my shop while I was gone, but have decided to leave it open, with an announcement that all shipping will be delayed until my return on May 26. I'll have internet access while I am there, and can check my shop, and my convos, so I will be able to stay on top of stuff.

Whee! Look at me!

My friend, the lovely Nancy of NanjoDogz has featured Bailey and me in her blog.

I met Nancy through the Dogs and Art group on Flickr. It's a really fun group for folks that love dogs.

I hope you'll take a look at our interview!

I finished a beautiful bracelet last night, but have no way to photograph it yet - still no word on the fate of my camera.

I also took another Silver Art Clay class on Saturday - this one was on Silver Paste. We painted actual leaves with the silver paste, and fired them, in hopes of ending up with a pendant. This didn't work out so well for me. I chose a ginkgo leaf, and for some reason the paste just would not adhere to the leaf. About halfway through the class, the teacher suggested I do a back up leaf just in case the gingko didn't work out, so I also did a small geranium leaf.

We actually managed to glob enough silver paste onto my second gingko leaf (had to scrap the first after the leaf rejected the paste and then tore in half), and it fired OK. It looked kind of plain when everything was finally done, so we added a faceted garnet to the pendant, and I refired it yesterday. I had to leave it cooling in the kiln overnight at the shop, and won't see it until tomorrow.

Then there was that backup geranium leaf. It decided to break during firing.

Then the Dremel we were to use to drill bail holes wasn't working, so I don't so much have a gingko leaf pendant, but more of a paperweight, right now.

And since I don't have my camera, you will just have to imagine what all of this looks like!

I am pretty much over the Art Clay Silver. I gave it a good try, but it just isn't my thing.