The midnight daisy collection

So here is part of the Midnight Daisy collection. A round box pendant, which has holes in the side to let the central flower catch the light, a couple of different rings and simple flower post earrings, in a few sizes. It's all quite chunky, but I can see this is what I'll be making for this month at least. Not quite sure which one I'm keeping ;-)

Spring is coming - honest!!

Carrying on with the theme, this has just been finished, though not connected as it needs to be for a necklace, but the cleaning up has been done. I was able to get the patina the exact same colour as the cubix zircona - a lovely pinky mauve, however once you lacquer them, the colour loses some of its warmth, but at least it will be safe to wear. If you look carefully it has three crystals in the lowest is a mauvy colour the next up is a pinky red, and the top one is a pale lilac.

I think, this one is staying with me. Two reasons, one - I am sooo pleased with it and two - until I get my hallmark sorted out I can't sell it in the UK anyway, as we have a law here that anything weighing over 7.8 grms must be hallmarked by the assay office, and this beast weighs nigh on 12 grms!! So would be blinkin expensive anyway! (£60 / $98), so reckon it's time for a present for me, and anyway it's my birthday very very soon!!

New Ideas

New kiln, new ideas. Recently a design of mine got ripped off by someone, initially I got royally hacked off by it, but in the end decided that as I do this for calm and peace and it is my passion I had to let it go and discover other ways / methods to play. So here is what I am doing at the moment. I am using more and more other elements in my silver and I added a patina on the recessed part to give definition. Time consuming and absorbing and I have to say I was delighted with the end result. I have another 7 or 8 in the process at the moment, and will post them when they are ready.

Patinas for pmc

I am by no means going to claim to be an expert here, but have been delighted with the results I have been getting with liver of sulphur of late. Just thought I'd share a few ideas.
A lot of the how to's say you should mix the liver of sulphur (LOS) with boiling hot water and keep dunking. Well all of the tutorials on youtube that I've watched show their items turning dark then brown then black, which when you want colour isn't really that helpful so... here's what I've found.
You'll need, bicarb of soda, LOS, ammonia, and plenty of kitchen towl.

Yes, start with hottish water, but have a bowl of very cold water close by plus a solution of bicarb of soda and water to hand. (about two or three heaped tea spoons in a cup of cold water).
First make sure the silver is ready to go. By that I mean that it is finished and polished. Then clean it with a dab of bicarbwith a drop of water to make sure there's no greasy residue.
Now you are ready to start.
A cup of hot water (from the kettle), a drop of ammonia and a drop of LOS. (I use liquid). Stir it up.
Dunk quickly then dunk in cold water. Dry it off with paper towel, and then wait. To get colour it is time consuming. Now slow down and watch, let the water cool a bit,dunking in LOS solution and then cold water and waiting for the colour to emerge. If the solution gets too cold, you apparently can heat it in a microwave - which I do - don't know if that's dangerous, but I read you could and I'm still here. As soon as you have the colour you want dunk it straight in the bicarb solution to neutralise it.
If you have gone too far, and it has started to turn black, I dunk it in silver dip - works for me -as long as you clean with bicarb again it works a treat.
Good colouring!

Patinas - Midnight Flowers

The range of flowers is growing. I wanted to make some flowers with some colour in, and so the saga of trying to get a patina finish started. Well three weeks later I finally managed to get a result I was pleased with, and that is the central one - that I have kept, is not for sale and is staying with mummy!! Totally delighted with it. The colours of all of these is so vibrant and rich, the photos just can't them justice. Many glasses of wine, searching through books and online, checking in with forum buddies helped me get here, so I am very grateful to the metalclayheads team at Etsy.

Silver Flower Collection

The idea of making flowers came during one lovely summer day sitting in the garden. I love the simple shapes. It seems to me that nature makes everything from either circles or squares. (I know some famous artist said there were only three shapes necessary - can't remember who it was). So this was the first series. I call these flowers at dusk. I didn't want them to be just bright silver so I treated them with a patina, but deliberately kept it just dark greyish.

I think my favourite is the wet water lilies in the centre.