Kate’s Jewellery Making Blog

- tutorials, videos and articles on the craft of jewellery making

March 28th, 2009 at 9:54 pm

I love PMC!

Posted in: The Journey
PMC

Today I took a beginners PMC course with fantastic tutor Di Osman. I had so much fun and I don’t think I’ve ever been so pleased with something in such a short amount of time.
The best thing about taking a course (as opposed to experimenting at home) is that I gained the confidence (and had the resources in front of me) to try more unusual techniques; for example dipping the finished piece in liver of sulphur to get a marvellous effect (in the top left pieces in the picture)
We found out the effect varies depending on how warm the water you add the sulphur to is. As I used it later on; the water had cooled quite a bit and gave this almost golden effect. If used in warmer water the effect is a bluey purple one.
Who would have thought you could get a chunk of silver by moulding clay, baking it for 3 minutes with a hand held torch and polishing it off!
Finding materials and stamps to get certain effects will be my new quest. In the class we used rubber stamps, pastry cutters, leaves and leather to get fantastic results. Little tubes can be used to cut holes or make patterns like on my star.
PMC is expensive but I made all this with still some left over out of a 30g pack with costs around £30. I’m sure I have enough left for at least another pair of earrings or a pendant. That works out at £6 per set and considering your end result is a chunk of 99.9% silver I think it’s fantastic value for money.
Best of all we all achieved these sort of results just on our first day and there is so much more to learn. We don’t need to invest in lots of equipment, just a small blow torch (very cheap) and some files, cutters (also dead cheap) You can find textures outside such as leaves, pebbles, bark, stone etc…
I would definitely recommend having a go with PMC!
This entry was posted on Saturday, March 28th, 2009 at 9:54 pm and is filed under The Journey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

17 Responses to “I love PMC!”

  1. jean Says:

    These look fab! I have just ordered myself a starter kit of pmc cant wait for it to arrive. I think i will look for a course too… Im just going to take a look at your tutorials now for some ideas

    thanks for sharing!!

  2. specialists Says:

    I loved this post. It was so interesting. I will come back for sure. Im gonna bookmark it. thanks

  3. Beads Says:

    These are fantastic, I absolutely love them. Gives me the go ahead I needed to do a course on a similar thing. Thanks and look forward to future posts.

  4. nic Says:

    Instead of liver of sulphur, you can put your silver items into a sealed plastic tub along with a warm hard-boiled egg (cut in half). Leave for a while, and the silver gets a fantastic aged effect.

    Enjoying your blog!

  5. Kirsten Says:

    hey kate, looks fab and very pleased for you opening up a shop. i hope it’s going well, please let us know. pmc is definitely something I am going to try out but right now i’m recommencing my earring making with beads after a very long break from it. all the best, Kirsten xx

  6. Jewellery Making Says:

    Beautiful pieces, would love to be able to do such pretty pieces.

  7. Leanne Says:

    They are lovely peices. I really like the butterflys dipped in liver of Sulphur. I am definately wanting to have a go. x

  8. Nick Says:

    Yes that looks great, but 99.9% silver is very soft, the jewellery will be worn off quite quickly, that is what stopping me to use PMC.

  9. Julie Says:

    Attending seminars are really valuable because you can learn a lot if you can personally observe how they do it. I attended several craft-related seminars and I can say that I learned faster compared from reading the craft books that I have. Sometimes, you can even learn an entire book by attending simply attending a whole day seminar.

  10. Natacha Says:

    Realy nice result!

  11. Sapphire Pendants Says:

    Beautiful. You have a real talent, these are absolutely gorgeous pieces.

  12. Nick Says:

    You are very talented and your end products are a credit to you.
    Keep up the good work and I’m sure we will see more beautiful results to come.

  13. Stuart Cross Says:

    These pieces are fantastic and demonstrate real talent.

  14. Anne Says:

    Lovely pieces.Many of these look like they have been inspired by vintage jewellery

  15. Tom Says:

    Hi Katie

    I have a question about the site but can’t find a contacts page. Any chance you could drop me a line so we can talk further?

    Thanks!

    Tom

  16. byZarah.com Says:

    Ah! I know precious metal clay is fantastic! I was also hooked from the first time I tried it. Your pieces in the picture are very cute too :) Well done!

  17. Hannah Says:

    I agree PMC is great, so many avenues to explore.

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