PMC level 1

I spent the last few days at the PMC Studio in Amersham doing a PMC level 1 course, some of you may remember I won the Beads and Beyond PMC competition back in July and my prize was this certification course. I had a great time and expanded my knowledge of working with the silver clay and I got to chat to some lovely ladies who were also on the course. So now for the pictures of what I made as I know that is what you are really interested in :o)

Im going to share pictures roughly in the order that the pieces were made, so to start off with the first piece was to be made by taking a mould from something and to make a piece that included a fireable gemstone. I chose a cute little kitty button to work with and below you can see a picture of the button and the fired pendant which has a marquise cz nose !



a little polishing later (Sorry I know you can see me in the reflection, bit of a eek to photo is this one) -



Im thinking I will oxidise it a little to try and bring out a little of the detail a bit more, if I do I'll share a photo of how he turns out. The next task was to make a "dry construction" bead I loved this bit which involved cutting the shapes of clay you want drying them over a former to dome them and then putting them together and getting the piece all sanded and lovely and ready to be fired, definitely a task to indulge in for those who are a little anal about things (like me, there, I said it before anyone else can !) My piece was quite simple, a different leaf print on each side and the rest left plain, the plain got the high shine treatment (think lots of elbow grease with the burnisher) and the leaves I left as brushed to give contrast.



Next we got to work on making textured band rings which was an interesting excersize for me too, having not made a ring in clay before. I chose a texture that could be fun to add some resin to, to give it a bit of colour so once I have finished polishing it (it has only had a tumble so far) I'll have a play and let you know how i get on.



We started to really multi task at this point as there were several bits that needed to be started and then left in order to dry so we worked on a piece with wood clay where you make a shape and then paint it with the pmc in order to leave you with a hollow form when it is fired and we needed to work on our leaves. So in no particular order, I give you my painted geranium leaf -



and my hollow formed House, decorated with paper clay tiles, I couldnt decide whether to make a house, a barn a bird house of where to go so its sort of a "rustic dwelling" lol -



We did a pmc set glass pendant with some dichro, not my best piece by far but interesting to do -



And last but not least we made a 2 part clasp with PMC and fine silver wire, I decided on a sea theme in the end as I know I have some findings somewhere that might go quite nicely ...



So there you have it the products of all my hard work :o) looking forward to playing more with the clay soon and finishing some of the projects I have had on the go for a while now !