Tutorials by K S Jewellery Designs

Tutorials by K S Jewellery Designs
(Click on the pictures for more details)

Sunday 11 January 2009

More haste, less speed

I've been busy today with my silver clay and am certainly learning the lesson of 'more haste, less speed'.

I wanted to try out my new mould making stuff called 'Oyumaru'. It's amazing - little strips of neon coloured plastic-like material that softens in hot water. I made a few moulds from some rubber stamps I had from a while back and was really pleased with the detail. Below are the pieces I made after drying and filing.

After taking this photo, I went on to fire them on my gas hob and when I did my heart went 'pop' (quite literally!). Obviously I hadn't left it to air dry completely. Well, in fact I had tried to speed up the process by putting them in my oven at a low temperature but foolishly hadn't thought that the heart would need more time to dry. The result was the heart had a little volcano shape popping out of it near the bottom. I tried to file it out but it changed the texture pattern. All was not lost, however, as I ended up filing and hammering out all the texture and then re-texturing it with my little pointed hammer. I'm actually quite pleased with the result. I'll post a picture tomorrow.

p.s. I've now made 'heart #2' from the same mould and have sensibily left it to air dry overnight!

No comments:

Post a Comment