Comments on: Not So Much Stopping As Not Starting https://jewelrymakingjournal.com/not-so-much-stopping-as-not-starting/ free jewelry tutorials, plus a friendly community sharing creative ideas for making and selling jewelry. Thu, 05 Mar 2015 09:57:36 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.7.15 By: Kerrie Venner https://jewelrymakingjournal.com/not-so-much-stopping-as-not-starting/#comment-336405 Thu, 05 Mar 2015 09:57:36 +0000 http://jewelrymakingjournal.com/?p=20083#comment-336405 After taking a class with, and reading Kate McKinnon’s books using metal clay, I discovered that I am in essence an element maker. By that, I mean I like to make all sorts of things, and get the greatest pleasure in the assembly of a wide range of media. By making your own unique signature components and findings with metal clay and fine silver wire, sterling components and other wires such as copper, bronze and brass, you can elevate your more ‘humble’ ingredients (cost wise) such as polymer clay, found objects, paper, fabric etc into desirable assemblages of unique adornment. The touch of artisan fine silver lends gravitas, in the eyes of your potential client, to the less costly but beautiful items. In addition, torch firing small silver metal clay components correctly will stablize them sufficiently for you to find someone who has a kiln and can give your metal clay pieces the recommended ‘deep heat soak’ of 2 hours that means you can work the metal properly. For the base metal clays you will need a decent kiln, but your pottery one will suffice for your experiments. Take some classes to get the confidence. Good luck and go for it. You will not regret it.

]]> By: Yodis https://jewelrymakingjournal.com/not-so-much-stopping-as-not-starting/#comment-12089 Mon, 25 Feb 2013 02:22:46 +0000 http://jewelrymakingjournal.com/?p=20083#comment-12089 My browser is actin funny and won’t load previous comments, but I also recently just discovered PMC. I loved hand-sculpting clay and throwing pottery in highschool, so I immediately found an item on eBay and got started.
A word of warning; even with a few years experience with clay, I found pmc challenging to work with; it dries quickly making it hard to make repairs if you make mistakes (I tried using slip, as per instructions, to repair a dry, unfired piece, to no avail). The stuff isn’t cheap, and unless you really know your metals AND clay, you can waste a lot of money, fast!

That being said, if you want to take on the challenge, I suggest googling “PMC3 starter kit”. It comes with a small ceramic kiln (like a flower pot with an open lid and insulation). I found a kit online for only $35! It included a 16g pack of PMC3 (supposedly the easiest to work with) and also included all the tools needed to get started. You use a lighter fluid gel (like sterno gel for chafing/buffet dishes). You can fire a few small pieces at once and you just let the fuel burn out in ~15 min. If u search ebay, u can find some awesome deals that retailers can’t beat!
Just be warned (again) it gets expensive. With the 16g pack of clay I got with the kit, I was only able to make 4 small pendants. I’ll still continue using the medium but only for custom orders; the cost is too high for me to make something that isn’t guaranteed to sell.
Hope this helps u a bit.

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