Things have been c-r-a-z-y with the holidays passing! I made jewelry for ladies of our family, which I learned wasn't the best thing to do with just a few weeks before Christmas. I think next time, I'll get a head start...say....July?
I only got to take pictures of one of the pieces, and I have another but I can't post it yet!
So here's a glimpse at the part of the fish I spoke about a while back. I decided to do a simpler version of the Infinitely Fishy pendant for my Step Mom for Christmas, and this is it. I left off the infinity bubbles that were causing problems for me when I made this one. I'll be finishing that pendant at another time. So here are the pictures! We'll start with the pre-firing of the enamel. Here's Mr.Fishy getting ready for enamel firing...
This is the first time I've ever enameled, and boy was I nervous. The fish turned out alright, I had to do another firing after the first one to fix some of the enamel that pulled to the middle. Then I had to do a flash firing becauseI had to remove some of the enamel that drifted, and I caused scratching in the enamel (Oopsie!). Which brings me to the question...do they make smaller clean up tools for enamel? Must investigate! The ginormous alundum stone doesn't bode well for teeny tiny crevices.
Mr. Fishy here was supposed to be a Champlevé pendant but the scales ended up being barelyvisable through the enamel since I was heavy handed on the colors. Next time I suppose I should do less colors and use flux over the top? I guess it's not bad for a first try!
~*BronzClay*~
The next pictures are from my first bronze firing. They turned out a lot better than I had anticipated for my first try. I had one break, which was the shield. I did have bubbling on the backings of all but the cat pendant... I have to play around with the firing times more to fix that. I don't know if it's coincidence or not, but the one piece that fired perfectly had a hollowed out back. and that was the also the cat. The other pendants are very rough even though I had finished them to be smooth, which I am not sure if it's normal for the metal to do that, or if it was also a firing issue. Especially if they were overfired.
I used moulds for all of the bronze pieces here. The shield and the thistle pendant are from KraftyLady's moulds, the cat is from an Amco? mould, and
the ornate flat pendant is from the cool new Dynasty moulds. You can find the Dynasty moulds at Rio Grande, and I highly recommend them.
The other mentioned Bronze pieces:
Posts
