applehead: silver and gold...

Monday, 29 May 2006

silver and gold...

this describes the type of weekend I had perfectly..... on Saturday I finally went to my workshop , 'An introduction to working with Precious Metal Clay" ( it had been rescheduled twice due to lack of numbers because nobody knows what it is). And what exactly is Precious Metal Clay? Well besides being my newest obsessive passion, it is a jewelery making technique where you model a clay ( the PMC) into whatever shape you wish, fire it and end up with a piece of work that is 99% pure silver ! This is the clay below as well as the simple tools ( paint brushes , smooth roller in this case a sunscreen bottle ).

and here are my finished pendants ...

All this in a six hour workshop with plenty of time for tea and food breaks! I can just tell that I am going to become hooked on this especially as you can achieve finished results at home, using a firing pot made for ceramics work ( $70 odd compared to $1300 for a kiln) . I am just amazed at what you can actually do - you can build structures over combustible material like mouldable cork, paper even those cheese ball snacks ( much preferable to eating them - that yellow!) to form hollow beads , shapes, etc.

After such an exciting day it was lovely to just relax and finish off a few things on Saturday evening. I watched the new Harry Potter movie ( great ) after Iron Chef had finished ( just love the Chairman, especially those outfits) and added the last touches to a little string of birds that are off to Brooklyn, New York. I am doing a little vintage button swap with the talented Ann Wood - take a look at her beautiful horses and magical ships...its like they've almost sailed out of a fairytale. I have a thing for birds at the moment ( see pendant above) and I am determined to use up some of my collection of handmade felt - I have such a pile left from uni days both as a student and a lecturer. Not to mention wool tops , so I am busy finding new and wonderful ways to use it so that I can start making some more. Who knows maybe I'll even put some up for swaps - if anyone out there wants some hand made felt drop me a line. So back to the birds..I am really happy with how they turned out...

and hanging from my very useful door...

and close ups...

Sunday afternoon we decided to take the girls down to Balmoral beach as it was such a clear crisp afternoon and I just love being on the beach in cold weather. Rose and Charlie made sand "icecreams" - I couldn't stop Charlie from attempting to lick hers much to her disgust. After the third lick we decided to have a paddle. The water was very chilly indeed so of course Rose fell in. As they do. Luckily I had expected such a thing to happen the at least one of them, so after a change of clothes it was off to Grandma Maggie's ( who lives just up the hill) for fish and chips and mini magnums all round. Charlie much preferred this one to the one made of sand.
Some happy snaps..