Design & Sculpting
Ok, this is the part where I did the bulk of the making of the piece, which for reference took about 45 mins. Firstly, I produced quite a few sketches, see below, and ended up choosing the one on the far right (drawn to size) as it had a more simplistic design. I was, in the end very glad I had chosen a more simple design, as I was quite overfaced by getting used to the clay. After making my first piece with this material I can safely say don't jump in on the deep end with this material, not least because it takes time getting used to, but also because its too expensive to waste!!
Ok, so, sketches done, I got a handy bit of tracing paper, and traced out the outside of the shape, drew where I would put a hole (so I could put in a bail to hang it from a chain), and also drew where the gem would sit on the centre of design - for this design I picked a 25mm x 18mm Mother of Pearl cabochon (cabochon = a flat backed gem, so its easier to mount). I cut out this design for later.
Here's what the silver clay looks like in person.. not very silver! For this piece, I used about a fifth of this teeny lump, I would estimate, maybe a tiny bit more.
Here's where the tracing paper came in very handy. Firstly, I rolled my lump of clay into a little ball. I put that inbetween two sheets of baking paper (so it wouldnt stick to my roller), and rolled it out quite thinly. I would estimate that the thickness of this base is about 0.75 - 1.00 mm thick. I don't know how good or bad that is as a thickness - I will find out upon firing!
After rolling, I put my cut out tracing paper on top of the shape and cut around it using a sharp scalpel blade to get the basic shape. I tried to be careful but it isnt very neat at this point. As you can see from the very small ball, this amount of clay was only just able to make my shape (it really doesn't go far...).
In this piece, I thought it would be nice if, from the back of the piece you could see through to the stone, so as you can see I cut out a leaf shape from the rolled out silver to make a little window.
I think its important to note at this point I was finding the material quite hard to work with! The clay I purchased was Slow Dry clay but, to be honest this dried out immensely quickly. I could honestly do very little with it at all and it was so so hard to work with once it had dried. I suppose I could have added some water though to see if that helped. Note to self, I'll try that next time! As such I decided to simplify my design further on this piece (rather that than ruin it at this stage!). I made the cutout piece, and the spare blob from the last step into small leaf shapes.
I also purchased some silver clay in a syringe (which they advertise as very helpful for making patterns and such). It was, but I found it a really really hard material to work with. Oddly, this was not slow dry clay in the syringe, and seemed to be much wetter and stickier than the slow dry clay. This seemed VERY backwards to me!!! So yes, the syringe clay was a nightmare to work with. It was immensely sticky, and blobby, and I found that it came out of the syringe in a far thicker blob than I would have liked.
There aren't any photos of this stage cause I was too busy getting covered in clay and having a nightmare!
I placed the stone in the middle of the design, and dragged the syringe around the stone to form a border (shown below) which would hold the stone in place. It came out very irregularly, but, seeing as the clay was too unpredictable and unhelpful to work with, being this wet and sticky, I felt I had to leave it a few minutes, then returned to it, and began smoothing out the border around the stone into some sort of consistent flow. I also sat the two little leaf shapes onto the border (where the stickyness of the stuff proved helpful as it cemented the leaves onto the piece)
As you can see it looks kinda messy. I smoothed it out as best I could to say the syringe clay was basically like paste and left it to dry.
This is a shot of the same step from above. The mother of pearl has a really pretty sheen to it :)
Thats all for now but stay tuned! Next time, I'll be filing & refining the dried design and.. gulp... firing it!
Ok, this is the part where I did the bulk of the making of the piece, which for reference took about 45 mins. Firstly, I produced quite a few sketches, see below, and ended up choosing the one on the far right (drawn to size) as it had a more simplistic design. I was, in the end very glad I had chosen a more simple design, as I was quite overfaced by getting used to the clay. After making my first piece with this material I can safely say don't jump in on the deep end with this material, not least because it takes time getting used to, but also because its too expensive to waste!!
Ok, so, sketches done, I got a handy bit of tracing paper, and traced out the outside of the shape, drew where I would put a hole (so I could put in a bail to hang it from a chain), and also drew where the gem would sit on the centre of design - for this design I picked a 25mm x 18mm Mother of Pearl cabochon (cabochon = a flat backed gem, so its easier to mount). I cut out this design for later.
Here's what the silver clay looks like in person.. not very silver! For this piece, I used about a fifth of this teeny lump, I would estimate, maybe a tiny bit more.
Here's where the tracing paper came in very handy. Firstly, I rolled my lump of clay into a little ball. I put that inbetween two sheets of baking paper (so it wouldnt stick to my roller), and rolled it out quite thinly. I would estimate that the thickness of this base is about 0.75 - 1.00 mm thick. I don't know how good or bad that is as a thickness - I will find out upon firing!
After rolling, I put my cut out tracing paper on top of the shape and cut around it using a sharp scalpel blade to get the basic shape. I tried to be careful but it isnt very neat at this point. As you can see from the very small ball, this amount of clay was only just able to make my shape (it really doesn't go far...).
In this piece, I thought it would be nice if, from the back of the piece you could see through to the stone, so as you can see I cut out a leaf shape from the rolled out silver to make a little window.
I think its important to note at this point I was finding the material quite hard to work with! The clay I purchased was Slow Dry clay but, to be honest this dried out immensely quickly. I could honestly do very little with it at all and it was so so hard to work with once it had dried. I suppose I could have added some water though to see if that helped. Note to self, I'll try that next time! As such I decided to simplify my design further on this piece (rather that than ruin it at this stage!). I made the cutout piece, and the spare blob from the last step into small leaf shapes.
I also purchased some silver clay in a syringe (which they advertise as very helpful for making patterns and such). It was, but I found it a really really hard material to work with. Oddly, this was not slow dry clay in the syringe, and seemed to be much wetter and stickier than the slow dry clay. This seemed VERY backwards to me!!! So yes, the syringe clay was a nightmare to work with. It was immensely sticky, and blobby, and I found that it came out of the syringe in a far thicker blob than I would have liked.
There aren't any photos of this stage cause I was too busy getting covered in clay and having a nightmare!
I placed the stone in the middle of the design, and dragged the syringe around the stone to form a border (shown below) which would hold the stone in place. It came out very irregularly, but, seeing as the clay was too unpredictable and unhelpful to work with, being this wet and sticky, I felt I had to leave it a few minutes, then returned to it, and began smoothing out the border around the stone into some sort of consistent flow. I also sat the two little leaf shapes onto the border (where the stickyness of the stuff proved helpful as it cemented the leaves onto the piece)
As you can see it looks kinda messy. I smoothed it out as best I could to say the syringe clay was basically like paste and left it to dry.
This is a shot of the same step from above. The mother of pearl has a really pretty sheen to it :)
Thats all for now but stay tuned! Next time, I'll be filing & refining the dried design and.. gulp... firing it!
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