Monday 26 July 2010

Lots of PMC and Beautiful Giraffes

My week has been filled full of PMC! Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I spent with Deidre and Honey who were visiting from Ireland to learn some beading and PMC techniques. We didn't actually get to the beading as the very ambitious PMC projects took over. The pieces that were made were very beautiful.



This was Honey's syringe heart pendant. The pendant is approximately 10cm tall. I had never fired a syringe project this big before so was a little unsure as to how it would fire. During firing some areas of the pendant collapsed so Honey needed to build up the areas and then we fired again. When working with syringe its very important to build a good structure with the lines of PMC and also to make sure the lines are a full thickness.



Dierdre's necklace and earrings set was made using some poppy heads that I picked from my garden a year ago. Its important that the poppy heads are dry. She used PMC paste to cover the poppy...let it dry...coated again and kept repeating this until a thick enough layer was achieved. Pearls were then attached using some beads & wire and stringing techniques.



Saturday I ran a PMC Rings workshop. I had a really lovely group. Most of the group made two rings using lump PMC, stones, textures, cutters and syringe. We did have some problems with a couple of the rings breaking during filing, before firing. When this happens it can be very difficult to stop the piece from cracking at the same point even if it has been filled with paste. I find it best to fire the ring then finish the piece, maybe add more paste and fire again.



This ring is a good example of how liver of sulphur can react. This piece was submerged in LoS after it had cooled for 10 minutes. As you can see the silver has been oxidised an almost gold colour. I think this looks beautiful with the green stone. Liver of Sulphur is fairly unpredictable and many factors, such as heat of water, strength of liquid, type of water, will effect the colour you get. You can see more images of the workshops on our Facebook page.



After my busy week I had an unusual day off on Sunday so we went to Cotswold Wildlife Park. We probably go once or twice a year, its always a great day out and Harry can come too. The park has had lots of improvements made....and they've now got three male Giraffes!!




After lots of walking, lots of food and the sun we were all looking forward to relaxing on the sofa. Harry got cosy in the car!!

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