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Saturday, January 5, 2013

The Results of Designs 1, 2, and 3... and the Steel is out of the Kiln

Checklist for today:
1) Fire metal clay pieces
2) Finish enamel charm earrings (project 3)
3) Patina paddle earrings (project 1)
4) Photograph and list all three projects
5) Order supplies

If I get all that done and still have time left today, I’ll start on project 4.

While I was doing the Phase 1 firing of my metal clay today, I was reading one of Hadar’s books and it re-inspired me to try GOING through her books, doing all the projects (or most of them).

Since charcoal and steel bowls are on my list of supplies to order, I’ll wait until I get those, but then I’d like to challenge myself to complete as many techniques in her book(s) as possible.

I managed to get through items 1-4. I will try to work on ordering supplies first thing tomorrow morning. And actually, Design #4 may have to wait a day or two because I have a commissioned order I need to work on.

The metal clay pieces I fired today were several all steel pieces and two all bronze XT pieces. The bronze was leftover from my December class with Hadar. They are all pieces for me to practice inlay (of various sorts), but here’s what they look like right out of the kiln.



Those bumps on the larger of the two bronze pieces is blistering. The heat was too high for those pieces. You can see pitting on the backsides.



After that, I worked on soldering, tumbling, texturing, adding patina, and using the rolling mill. And here are the new listings.

Design 1 before and after.




Design 2 before and after.




Design 3 before and after.




As you can see, it’s not important for me to have the final creation look precisely like the original design idea. As a matter of fact, in some cases, the final creation won’t look even remotely like my original idea. Although I like to have a plan to start off with, it’s equally acceptable for me to wander from that plan as far as is needed to reach the end of the journey.




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