Horses and Leopards...?

I live in a town known for its Thoroughbred horses (Aiken, SC) - so I designed a few pieces of jewelry that are "horse-themed."

I turned this Art Clay Silver pendant featuring a horse into a dangly pendant by adding lots of blingy 4 and 6mm Swarovski crystals in 3 different colors of blue, swinging from sterling silver chain.

Then I built the necklace, using an airy, open sterling chain and links made from leopard skin jasper and freshwater pearls (and more crystals, of course!)

And matching earrings (leopard skin jasper, freshwater pearls, Swarovski crystals) complete the set!

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.

More Art Clay Silver, and a Little Venting

Before I get into the meat of this post, may I just vent for a moment about how irritating the blogger login process is?

First of all, I carefully copy and paste my e-mail address in, because if I type it in, blogger ALWAYS rejects it as invalid.

Then I carefully type in my password, and without fail, blogger tells me it is invalid, and makes me type it again. I mean, every time, every single time. They do the same thing to Bailey. What is the deal?

But this is my favorite: Then I get the error page, that tells me this:
"Your browser's cookie functionality is disabled. Please enable JavaScript and cookies in order to use Blogger."
Which of course is complete horseshit, because my cookies ARE enabled, and then I have to go to my favorites and click back to my blog page, and now I am logged in. Blogger login sucks.

OK, I'm done.

I've taken a lot of classes since the last time I posted, so here is the scoop:

I told you I was going to take a few more Art Clay Silver classes, and I have.
A couple of weeks ago, I took Enameling on Art Clay Silver. Our class projects were a pendant and a pair of earrings. In this picture, the organic binder in my pendant burns off in the kiln.

This picture shows everyone's projects firing in the kiln. This stage takes 8 to 10 minutes. Once the pieces have fired, we will sand them, and then apply the enamel. Did you know that enamel is glass? I didn't, until this class, that is!

Yep, the enamel is actually fine particles of glass that we fuse to the metal.

This is my pendant, after it fired. I had just finished brushing it with this wire brush, so all the silver molecules are now "standing at attention." Prior to brushing, it looked like a piece of pottery.

Here are both projects, right before I started applying the enamel.

They are sitting on the different sanding cloths used to smooth them.

There are 2 different ways to apply the enamel. (That's why we had 2 class projects!) One way is called sifting, and that is how we enameled the earrings. Fine, dry particles of glass frit are placed in a very small sifter, and sprinkled over the pieces, just like sifting powdered sugar over a cookie.

The other enameling method is called Wet-Pack, and I forgot to take a picture of it. In this technique, the fine glass frit is mixed with a small amount of distilled water to make a slurry, which is then applied with a very small paint brush to your piece. This technique gives you more control over where your color ends up. Whichever technique you use, the piece is fired in the kiln again, to fuse the enamel to the silver.

I used the Wet-Pack technique on my pendant, so in this picture of my finished projects, you can see that the color is applied just in the swirl design on the pendant. Where I sifted enamel onto the earrings, I got a more widespread color effect.

These techniques can be combined, but that's too advanced for me!

This past Saturday I took an Advanced Art Clay Silver Class, where the project was a pendant with a bezel-set cabochon.

Initial prep of the clay is the same as with other Art Clay Silver Projects, but preparing the bezel is tedious, and must be done first (so your clay doesn't dry out). The bezel is formed from 28-gauge fine silver, and must be measured to fit the cabochon fairly precisely. Silver oil paste is used to "glue" the bezel's seam together temporarily.

Once the bezel is done, the clay is prepared, and the bezel is pressed into the clay. The pendant is dried prior to firing - the clay can be allowed to dry overnight, or drying can be sped up by using a mug warmer.

Once the piece is dry, it goes into the kiln. Here is a shot of the organic binder in my pendant burning off - that is my favorite part!

After firing, the stone is placed into the pendant, and then the fun begins (not really). The next step is bezel rolling, and this was my least favorite part. The bezel must be carefully fit to the stone in order to hold the stone in place, and this step requires 2 tools and a lot of hand and finger/thumb strength. I do NOT have a lot of strength in my hands, and this step was very difficult and painful for me.

Starting at the bottom of the bezel, a bezel-roller is pressed all around the stone to snug the stone in place. This is repeated at the top of the bezel. Then, a curved metal burnisher is used to roll the top of the bezel over the stone to really hold it in place and give it a nice finished look. This was absolutely a nightmare for my hands and thumbs.

We then painted diluted liver of sulfate on the Art Clay Silver, to give an oxidized look to the pendant. We painted, rather than dipping the pendant in the liver of sulfate, because you don't want to get the liver of sulfate on the bezel or on your stone. Following the liver of sulfate, the piece is polished.

This picture shows my pendant after the liver of sulfate but before polishing.

This is my finished pendant, after polishing.

And that's it for Art Clay Silver today!

I started this post over 3 hours ago. I had the (usual) technical problems logging in, and the (usual) issues with picture uploading - I don't know why the pics can't just load where you want them to, instead of loading at the top of the page, and having to be dragged. Good grief. And one backspace too many, and you delete a photo, and have to upload it again, which I only had to do FIVE times today. Then, Blogger crashed in the middle of my post, and was down for 20 minutes. All this whining is to get to this: poor, long-suffering, patient Bailey has been sitting beside me for an hour and a half, begging to go outside. He alternately gets up and growls, noses my left hand, and then sits back down in the exact same position, then starts all over again in 2 or 3 minutes. And I kept thinking I would be finished ANY minute, so I made him wait. Bad Mom! I don't feel too guilty, though, because I finally gave in about 10 minutes ago, and, as I suspected, all he wanted was to go bark at the workers next door again. He can be very manipulative!

The Jury's Still Out on This

So I took another class this weekend, this time to learn how to use Art Clay Silver. If you aren't familiar with this, it is an organic clay polymer in which silver particles are embedded. The clay is manipulated into the desired shape, then fired in a kiln, where the organic binder burns off, leaving fine silver (99.9% silver).

When starting, the clay is grayish white, an pliable. We rolled out it flat, like cookie dough, and then used cookie cutters to form it into the desired shape. The class project was a pendant, and I chose to make a starfish. Before we cut the shape out, we stamped the clay with a textured rubber stamp, to impart some texture to the finished design. I later found out how important this texture can be to the finished product!

A small caliber drinking straw was used to cut the hole for the bail.

After the shape is cut out, the clay has to completely dry before being placed in the kiln. We placed the cut-out shapes on mug warmers to speed the drying process.

After drying, there is a lot of sanding, to smooth out rough edges. The piece is then fired for a short time, and then there is a lot more sanding. The piece is then dipped in liver of sulfate, to impart patina. At this time, the piece is very dark in appearance.

The piece is then polished again, which removes the patina from the surface, and leaves it embedded in the crevices of the textured surface.

That's my finished starfish pendant to the right. The texture is a little flat around the top arm of the starfish, because my big ole thumb contacted the surface during the sanding process, when I didn't realize the clay was still soft. The fingerprint ridges are hidden by the texture I stamped into the clay, which is why beginners stamp textures into the clay - to hide these boo-boos!

This was a very interesting process, with a lot of variations, and infinite possibilities. The clay itself is very pricey, and the whole process is extremely stuff-intensive, as I call it. There is so much equipment involved that start-up costs could be prohibitive. I'm scheduled to take another class, and we'll see if I fall in love with it. So far, the jury's out.