38/52 Extruding Fun!

 

This next challenge is all about some playing...oh sorry...that should be testing!!... that I've been doing with the new 3DMetalCreator from the very inventive and knowledgeable Bill Struve. 

This wonderful setup is powered by CO2 gas and is very simple and easy to use. You have a gas canister with a regulator, a foot pedal and at the end of the tubing you attach a syringe filled with bronze clay. When you put your foot down on the pedal the clay comes out the syringe so there is no effort on your part involved in extruding the syringe, and you have excellent control. 

These pieces in the photos were the very first pieces I made using it. I love how you can get all lots of different results depending on what size nozzle you use. 

This little bronze critter was so quick to produce and he is hollow inside. The clay is designed to be quite firm so you can build up with it in layers. 

Here he is fired - OK he'll never win a beauty contest but it was so easy to make him! 

One of the things I found I really liked was using a flattened nozzle. The background of this piece was made using that nozzle and then a fine nozzle for the design on top. 

 Now this was my absolute favourite thing! Using the flat nozzle to extrude these shapes. No way could I do this is I was using hand pressure to extrude the clay. Making wavy designs with the syringe was just a doddle though :)

This piece was made as four separate lengths and then joined before firing. The clay bonded with just some water to join it. 

Bill designed the 3DMetalCreator to be used with a refillable 20oz CO2 cylinder. If you have paintball places near to you that is probably no problem. As I found it difficult to get my cylinder filled he suggested I tried a disposable 90gm canister with an adapter. I found I could buy them no problem and the set up worked well.

The 3DMetalCreator is an ongoing project and today a Kickstarter has been launched. I think there is a great future for this.

Bill has been creating large scale pieces. For me I find it fascinating trying the possibilities of intricate small scale work and I'm very excited at the prospect of using this with silver in the future.

Do check out the Kickstarter campaign - you'll find loads more info!!

Have fun!

Joy x

PS My textures are now back in stock on my website :D

27/52 A Touch of Silver

I recently saw a product advertised which piqued my interest! It is made by HS Walsh here in the UK and is a Silver Plating Solution. Apparently all you do is rub it on and it adds silver to the surface. Whilst this seems to be mainly marketed for tarting up items of worn silver plate the fact that it said it could be used on any base metal got me interested. I wondered how well it would work on fired bronze clay :)

I sorted out 4 pieces made using Goldie Bronze to have a play with. 

As these had been sitting around a while the first thing I did was polish them up to shiny, shiny :)

(You can tell they are now shiny as you can see me holding the camera reflected on the angel ;) )

The instructions said I needed a soft cloth and some rubber gloves so my hands didn't go black. I was good to go!

I started out on the angel. Applied the solution liberally and rubbed...and applied and rubbed...and applied and rubbed...well you get the idea. A lot of elbow grease later and the angel was a little bit silvery - not what I had hoped for. Then I went onto the stone set ring working on the topper. Same thing. Definitely a lighter colour but not really silver. That stone set ring was made using a RingCore and guess what - as soon as I applied some solution onto the inside of the ring band it went silver straight away!!

Yup - it was one of those 'duh' moments. Of course. The RingCore was not metal clay so was not porous! Even though I had polished the pieces up really well using 3M Radial Bristle brushes and they were nice and shiny I had not used anything that was going to really seal the pores in the metal. 

So I got out my agate burnisher and burnished the surface of the cross really well. When I used the solution on it in just two applications the cross was really nice and silvery looking! Success!!

I left the square ring plain bronze to try to show the difference. Not easy to capture in a photo but hopefully you can see the difference.

I think this Silver Plating Solution gives a nice option for a quick silvery finish on base metal, and it is supposed to help prevent tarnishing. I'll leave these pieces out and report back on that in due time.

So there you have it - if you want a fast silvery look to your base metal clay make sure you burnish REALLY well :)

Have fun!

Joy x

Weekly Critter Challenge 3/52 - Pip-Squeak

 

For my third critter I have gone back to making Goldie Bronze sculptures.

 

This one is a cute little mouse! Pip-Squeak.

 

He has a long bendy tail...

 

 

... and an appealing look.

 

 

You can see he really is tiny!

 

Here is his poem, another haiku.

 

Happy little mouse
On hind legs sits with snaking tail
Any cheese for me?

 

My next critter will be in silver and enamel :)

 

Have fun!

 

Joy x

July Four A Month - Bronze Rings, but nearly Silver!

My Four A Month Challenge pieces for July are rings!! Bronze rings to be precise - BUT they very nearly were silver rings :)

In my last blog post you will recall I showed you a stack of lovely shiny silver rings all made in fine silver using Art Clay Silver and I had planned to make four of those my FAM. However, I have also been doing a bit more experimenting and testing with the new Goldie Bronze clay and I wanted to see if I could make my usual styles of rings using that. 

DON'T PANIC - Art Clay Silver is, and I suspect always will be my absolute favourite, but with the cost of silver as high as it is, it makes a nice change to have a play with something else and expand the repertoire a little.

So these are the four rings I liked best out of the ones I made.

Stone Set Snake Ring, this has an embedded bronze prong setting to hold the stone in it which worked very well.

Sunburst Ring, a nice solid chunky ring, more suited to a man I think. I have not made many square rings but I really like the style. The design was carved in the clay state.

Spiral Ring, the texture around the band on this one is a texture I created using Scratch Foam. For more information on creating those textures have a look at this tutorial by Wanaree Tanner.

Last of the four is Stoneburst Ring. I really like this design. The textures on this are made using Rolling Mill Resource textures, and again it has an embedded bronze prong setting.

In case you are more of a silver lover here is my photo of the four rings that were going to be the Four a Month.

The ring below is called Rustic Red, and was my most favourite ring I have ever made! I was definitely going to keep it for me. The red stone is one I brought back from my trip to Japan in 2010. Luckily I brought four of these stones back because I wore this ring to the next fair I went to and sold it off my finger!

The raised setting for the stone had a lovely rustic look to it...

...with a finish that looked like it had been hammered, and the pattern around the band was made using a Rolling Mill Resource texture...

...and the stone was the most gorgeous red and sparkled beautifully.

Yep, that really was my all time favourite, but as my husband always say - no problem - just make another.

I think I will do just that ;-)

Phew that was a long post - well done and thank you if you made it this far!