Lots of Bronze Clay

A few goofs and a lot of nice pieces. Some different colors this time. It is interesting to see how the colors change with each firing using the same batch of carbon. Below is the complete collection straight out of the kiln. You can compare it with the picture from yesterday to see the shrinkage.

The major goofs first. This piece split when I was working on it in dry clay. I wet both sides and put it back together but that wasn't enough to hold it together after firing. I should have tried using a small snake of clay along the break. From here I am going to try to put straps and faux rivets to connect the two sides and re-fire. We'll see if that works.

The next piece just split so strangely. Nothing happened to in the clay state. I don't even remember manipulating this alot....it just split.....big time.

Some earring pieces. All the discs were shined up with a brass brush. The rectangles were buffed up with a high grit polishing paper so just the high points shined up.



It's good to be the queen. This is a Teesha Moore stamp that I like and it looks much better in bronze than silver. I think she looks like Sophie Marceau as Princess Isabelle in Braveheart.




This is another one of Teesha's stamps. I love the stamp....a row of old English houses.... but I can't quite get it to work in metal. I don't like the look...but this is going to be the background of a pendant with a glass bead so it should work out OK.



Butts....This is another stamp from Teesha. I love the butts. I have no idea what to do with this. It's quite large and I wanted it to be suspended from the end rather than the top. It's the right size to make a luggage tag. If your luggage gets lost you can just tell them to look for the butt tag :))

This was an odd little stamp. I don't really like the pattern and probably won't use it again. The piece itself had some nice color to it.

A couple of medallions that I embellished with faux rivets. These pieces came out with green and rust colors on them. Lou said they look like I had buried them in the back yard for a year.

The same pattern on these two medallions. The first is larger and flat. The top split a little. That is my fault. Usually I cut a hole in the clay when it is wet but this sometimes distorts the piece. So I decided to use a needle file and create the hole when it was dry. Problem is I have not patience for the finer details of this work. I'm just drilling away and the top cracked. Again...I wet the crack and pushed it back together. I also used a donut to reinforce the area (good thing). But the crack took over. I'm learning that water to repair isn't enough like it can be with silver. This clay needs slip. The back of this pendant had some great color as well.







This version is smaller and convex and looks like it has been beat up quite a bit to get the warped edge at the bottom. But this is just how it came out of the kiln. Again this one has an interesting back.




Now what I consider to be the 2 best pieces of this run. The first is a round flat pendant that I cut a ragged slit into. Then I used straps and faux rivets to add "repairs" to it. I included faux rivets on the back to complete the piece.

The last piece reminds me of a neck collar or a breastplate...if it were much much bigger. I really like this both for the design and the colors. I will be making many variations on this one.

That's it for tonight.