Fired Copper, First Try.

Hi guys!
As I promised, here are the pictures from my firing results. First, here's different pictures of the larger pendants with their sanding and carving completed before loading into the kiln. These have better lighting for you to see them than the ones I posted yesterday.


And here they are post firing:



Eek, yup, I had breakage. Both pieces looked fine when they came out. The leaf pendant felt a bit light to me, and I started to suspect it wasn't sintered so I tried polishing it a bit to see. The top leaves are fine and strong, but the other side broke off into powdery half sintered? messiness...there's also a small visible ring on the band where I had originally thought to put a stone in and changed my mind, and had refilled it. I had this blended and filled in well, and had checked it to be sure it...but I can notice it now post firing. Part of the inside of the ring is flaking too. The bails of the K are weak and one snapped, I also managed to get a granule of the carbon wedged into his snout (lol) and it caused a hole. I used the highest firing schedule recommended.

So come tomorrow or friday, I'll fire the repairs and see how they go. I think it will be just fine though.


Oh, and I didn't get to post pictures of the little wyvern coins yesterday; but I whipped up a few of these teeny guys to go with the test batch as well. I love how the shrinking really brought out their textures. They're cute! I can't wait to start assembling them. I see blues...greens....reds....heraldic looking colors. (okay, I see blue with anything...I'm biased!)

Once I have a working torch again (mine went wonky on me the other day, seriously...whoosh!), I'll try using it on them for testing out the rainbow patina. I'm really enjoying the color of the copper too.



I do recommend if you play with the copper, or bronze that you buy a scrubby nail brush and use it when you're cleaning your hands. Both clays are sticky-like and the copper leaves a slight black film that is a bit hard to remove otherwise. I've been using a brush and a pea sized amount of a hand scrub.

Copper Clay, First Few Days.

I've been busy the last couple weeks playing around with making photopolymer's, and trying out the new CopprClay!

It took me several tries to get the photopolymer's to work, and I've finally found what works for me. I started playing with the copper and I'll be firing the pieces tomorrow. Here's a few pictures of what my last couple weeks have looked like:

This is the second part of the photopolymer process where I am curing the front of my image plate. It's almost ready for the scrubbing out part where I'll remove the excess liquid to reveal the impressed stampings.

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Here you can see a few of the photopolymer's cut out and ready for clay! I decided that I'll try them with the new CopprClay. Sorry for the mega eyesore of orangeness going on, I grabbed the mat to work with and didn't consider the hideousness for the pictures at the time.

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Tada! My first impression done with the photopolymer. Now I just need to clean up the design and the bails.

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More CopprClay: I decided to make a doughnut pendant with leaves. After drying and sanding the base of the pendant I started adding leaves. I prefer working with dry clay, so I cut out the leaves and curled them into the shapes I wanted to help start out the design. Once they were dry, I started carving and sanding them into the shapes I wanted.


You can see the clay has darkened with oxide from working on it a while. The leaves are coming along, they still need a bit more sanding and touching up. I don't know how much darkening of the clay I should be worried about, but I'll sand it some more to remove what I can. I'll use the higher firing time on the pieces due to the size of the leaf pendant.

I'll post more pictures of the finished pieces when I can...whether they survive the firing or not.

The clay is definitely interesting to work with. It has good give and bounce when dry. I've had some problems with it, but I'll have to experiment some more with it before I figure out what the culprit is.

Those of you who are metal clay artists, have you had a chance to play with one of the copper clays yet, and what has it been like for you? :)

Cross your fingers for me tomorrow!

Playing With Layouts

Hi guys!
I decided a while ago my blog needs a design overhaul, and so today I'm finally fixing it up. It's still a work in progress.

This week I plan on cleaning up my workspace (make sure there's no silver sneaking about, which with me it always is...) to start working on bronze and copper clay.

So whatcha think of the layout?! Do you like it? Any suggestions? :)


Lotsa love!
- Kel