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!