March 28th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
I love 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.
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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!!
March 29th, 2009 at 8:43 pmI loved this post. It was so interesting. I will come back for sure. Im gonna bookmark it. thanks
May 26th, 2009 at 6:38 amThese 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.
July 15th, 2009 at 2:45 pmInstead 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!
July 15th, 2009 at 10:05 pmhey 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
August 16th, 2009 at 4:57 pmBeautiful pieces, would love to be able to do such pretty pieces.
August 28th, 2009 at 3:57 pmThey are lovely peices. I really like the butterflys dipped in liver of Sulphur. I am definately wanting to have a go. x
September 22nd, 2009 at 9:31 pmYes 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.
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:59 amAttending 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.
October 29th, 2009 at 4:59 pmRealy nice result!
December 2nd, 2009 at 9:43 pmBeautiful. You have a real talent, these are absolutely gorgeous pieces.
December 9th, 2009 at 6:38 pmYou are very talented and your end products are a credit to you.
December 20th, 2009 at 11:15 amKeep up the good work and I’m sure we will see more beautiful results to come.
These pieces are fantastic and demonstrate real talent.
January 3rd, 2010 at 5:44 pmLovely pieces.Many of these look like they have been inspired by vintage jewellery
January 13th, 2010 at 6:26 pmHi 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
January 21st, 2010 at 4:32 pmAh! 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!
February 10th, 2010 at 12:34 pmI agree PMC is great, so many avenues to explore.
February 25th, 2010 at 6:40 pm