Friday, July 6, 2007

My PMC class Update 2


Ta da:
This is the pendant I made after almost 8 hours of hard work. After the clay dries, comes the most important process. The shaping, the sandpapering, more shaping, more touch ups, more drying, waiting, then shaping, sanding...and the whole process...until you are satisfied and in it goes into the kiln at a temperature of 900c.

And just when you think after you remove it from the kilm work stops there, you are wrong, you need to brush and I mean firm and strong but not elephant strength:)
Then step 2 , you need to use a tool to make the silver (the shine)come forth, cos when it comes out from the kiln,it looks stark white.
Step 2 ain't easy too as you need to be careful which angle of the tool you use as you can scratch the surface if you are not careful. This process was the hardest after firing as I wanted to leave the non leaf area matte so I could not brush that area.
Step 3:
Polish it, meaning rub it until there is heat and like magic, you see the leaf becoming shinier and shinier.

I took the picture immediately after I cam back and the lighting in my house is not very good or else you can see that only the leaf part is shiny. I left the other areas matte as I wanted to work with contrasting texture.I like it that the bail is hidden behind.
In my other lessons, my plan is to make another and put 14k gold powder on the leafs for greater contrast.

This is not a paper thin piece of silver pendant that you sometimes see. The leaf and the pendant base is about 2mm thick in total, about 12g of silver;nothing else, just pure natural silver.99.9%
Shiny right :)This is the pendant phtographed with flash.






This ring was handformed, no mould no cutout. Teacher says this is very important as many rely purely on moulds but this step of learning how to make it free hand is important as it trains your eye and gives you the experience and confidence later to carve other stuff. After all, this is part of the exam.



I think I am gonna find this most difficult as it is really challenging to make the width uniform throughout inside and outside:)



Oh well, this is my first attempt, so I will make more for practice. Love wearing rings. Am wearing it now as I type.
Next lesson is on the lacy technique. Imagine lace like texture wrapped around a stone.
A bit like the layers of a bird nest.

1 comment:

quirky lis said...

Hey, that's very good result achieved considering it's the first go!

Keep it up girl!

Now I am so tempted to go for the polyer clay class, clay silver is not so my cup of tea.