Day one, Intermediate Silver Metal Clay course

Our tasks for the next three days!

I am back once again at the Mid Cornwall School of Jewellery on the Intermediate Silver Clay course. There are six of us on the course from as far afield as Ireland.
The course is three days and we have a whole list of things we will make during this time. This is a certificated course so things have to be made to the correct standard. It puts the extra pressure on but at least it means the qualification is worth something, you don't just get it for turning up!
Today I made a band ring, two bracelet charms and a pair of carved silver earrings.
I don't tend to make band rings. Silver clay shrinks when it is fired so sizing rings can be a problem. It is also not really as strong as sterling silver (although soon this won't be a problem with silver clay!) so it isn't something I would make to sell. However, I have made rings before on courses so I felt OK with making this one. I have textured it with a basic diagonal line and I think it looks OK.
One of the bracelet charms will have a coloured resin piece in it. I have cut out a tear drop shape for this. This will be poured in tomorrow. The other charm had to be hand formed. I found this difficult, when you have too much freedom it is hard to know what to make! I ended up making a leaf charm. I'm not that happy with it but it's made of PMC which will shrink down. You never know, this might make it look better!
The earrings had to be carved out of PMC original silver clay. I have liked lino cutting in the past but found this difficult because each earring has to be exactly the same to pass. I wasn't very adventurous with it!
It's all in the kiln tonight so we'll see the results tomorrow.
A pub meal and back to the B&B. I'm feeling OK today but there's still four days left to go!

Leaf charm, resin charm, ring and carved earrings dried and waiting to be fired in the kiln

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