Thursday, January 20, 2011

Metal Clay Hoops


Here's a prototype of something new I'm working on- hoop earrings in metal clay. I fired these flat and then bent them and added sterling ear wires. I still have a few bugs to work out but I think they're pretty promising. It's hard to tell from the photo what they look like on so I will have to get a photo of that soon.

6 comments:

YorkAvenueStudio said...

These earrings are perfectly beautiful! I have fired a ring flat and bent it as a bypass - scary but fun.

Kathy

Copperheart said...

Thanks! I was a little nervous about bending them but I figured it was the best way to fire them in my little tiny kiln.

Anonymous said...

The love these earrings...your impressions are so crisp and deep.

Melanie-Pearl said...

i have broken so much metal clay trying to bend it. want to share what type it is? i'm totally curious. i won't bogart your awesome design. :) really, what great innovation of materials. clean, simple: silver.

Copperheart said...

It was PMC3. I use a hotplate kiln to fire my pieces, so I can take them out when they're still really hot and quench them right away, so they're annealed for bending. I think that helped. I wasn't sure if it would work but it worked fine this time. Hopefully it wasn't just beginner's luck.

Tracey said...

These are lovely! I've made hoop earrings with metal clay and used a similar technique. I used the Dynasty stamps for bypass rings from Riogrande. I fired mine flat also, then shaped. When I make metal clay pieces that I want to bend, I fire at 1650 for 2 hours (the optimum firing schedule for metal clay)to insure full sintering. Anything less seems to break. Again, lovely!
Tracey