My own seamless ring

I have found the seamless ring idea very interesting, It's easy, it's simple, practically it's an old idea from the casting just transferred to clay world.  Well... I'm probably very cheap, or just like to make my own tools:o)  but I just can't justify the price of this new/old invention. The piece of foam for 25$ it seem too much. So I decided to make my own:o)

1) I've made ring 2 sizes bigger than needed from the polymer clay, baked it.

 

2) cut two pieces from foam brick and pressed 1/3 of the ring into the foam. Put on the second piece and pressed both together, so now ring had imprint into both foam sides. Pierced with craft sticks both foam pieces to secure placement. Painted/Applied epoxy resin to the foam. Cured.

 

3) Made my one seamless ring. Dried one side. Took off the mold, finished drying. 

 

4. Sanding, carving, firing. Strange but all rings from all 4 metals ended up with different sizes and shrinkage (all of these metals were supposed to had shrinkage of  8-10% and all had been made from the same mold)?! All of them were fired separately, according to specific metal temperature. Strange?!

Steel, bronze, copper, white bronze. Initial size of the mold 10. Do I like kiln surprises? Not sure?!

Handmade Extruder

Another tip for handmade extruder. Hadar Jacobson has her tip for handmade extruder here. I always have problem to get myself to hardware store or when I'm here I forget what sizes of parts I need and ending up not buying what I should, so never got to try I make that one. But for my ring project I needed extruder and I decided to use syringe because I had it at home and could easy to transfer long sitting idea into reality.  So for beginning I just cut off a bigger hole at the end of syringe (first with craft knife then sanded with file)

 

Then I made from polymer clay a few disks, fired and cut a few forms. And VOILÀ!!!! Your own clay extruder at low cost :o)

 Have fun and enjoy!

Threaded troubles and possibilities

Well ...I thought I was more disciplined, but seem to be not true:o) every day posting it's probably not for me. A few month ago I've begun to play with threaded closure objects. At the beginning there were lockets. A few notes for myself - do not mix different shrinkage clays!!! a lot of fixing after that! but I manage and they all looked and worked well (actually not, one of them still in "fix it area")

 ©2012 Inga Zeitlin

Lockets: copper, bronze, steel

 You see...  I'm a multitasker by nature, can't do just one thing at time. If I'm working with jewelry, Photoshop or driving in the traffic -I listen to audio book, if I'm painting- the music. And looks like that I like multitasking in my jewelry too. I need: it will look nice, adorns me and has additional function, like keeping dear to my hart things, protecting from environmental influence  (metaphysics and physics altogether :o)

  ©2011 Inga Zeitlin

The Sirian Seal pendant

 Or,  as I decided with the threaded closure possibility,  have exchangeable possibilities. From there came the next idea of exchangeable rings and earrings. And here did come next note: do not mix different firing temperature clays in threaded closure objects. Because if you have to do any fixing (or have sintering issues with higher temperature firing clay) you will need to fire all parts again. Any firing will give some small shrinkage and the screw-in and screw-on parts won't  fit.

 ©2012 Inga Zeitlin

Ring: copper, bronze, steel, resin

 You live and learn, so after ring project I was smarter and earrings went nice and smooth:o)

 ©2012 Inga Zeitlin

Earrings: copper, bronze

Soooo.. Let's the life of posting begin:o) I've never wrote any dairies in my life so it will be a very interesting experience.  Why I decided now, you would ask? Well... four years ago I've discovered a metal clay and have got addicted:o) All learning was virtual and empirical (that mean, no courses, just me and clay)  I decided I have had enough experience to share my mistakes and tips with the artist working with metal clay. My web site it's too static and you need too much time to change something so I decided that blog is way to go. Maybe sometimes I'll go a little backwards just to be clear how I come to this or that point.
As for today I would share a little finding in the Dollarama's baby shower aisle :o) The perfect drying forms for metal clay domes:o)

Have a sunny weekend!