PMC and Fine Silver Wire

Doesn't time Fly...

Since my last blog the studio has come on beautifully. The decorating is complete, the silversmithing benches are in and the electrician will be here next week to put all the lights and sockets in. I have a working kitchen, a secure and working fire door - we're nearly there!! Time is flying by. We're already getting ourselves stocked for Christmas - early I know but our christmas shoppers will start earlier. I've been doing some really interesting experiments with PMC over the last week. Firing it at a much higher temperature 899 c and for longer at 2 hours - this is a firing taken from the book Sculptural Metal Clay by Kate McKinnon. Everything came out of the firing a combination of white and silver and very hard. This temperature takes the PMC to almost fusing temperature and means the silver becomes hard enough to hammer and work as you can sterling silver - it was rather amazing!! I'll up load an image I've taken on my iphone...

Kay's Beautiful Pug Gladys

I had to post this image...I think its beautiful.

Weekend Workshops

We're still decorating here but having to fill in around our workshops. It's nice getting back to normal although I have a lot of boxes that need to find a home!!

I've got a few weeks left until I start my Adult Learning teaching again but this year I have reduce my hours from three to two evenings a week. Hopefully when the new studio is finished I can begin teaching my own programme of evening classes and go back up to three evenings - that's the plan. Anyway, due to starting soon I have been trying to make use of my evenings off and have been doing some small projects. This is one of them. I love green so decided to use one of my PMC beads with a selection of crystal, fire-polished, glass, and pearl beads to create this 26 inch (ish) necklace. This type of design is great to wear with a plan t-shirt.

Precious Metal Clay Bead and Textured Crystal/Glass Chain

This weekend I delivered two big workshops. Saturday we did an Introduction to Precious Metal Clay - we had six people on the workshop. The group were wonderful a great buzz of enthusiasm and inspiration. There were some fabulous pieces made during the session. For more images visit our Facebook page.

Precious Metal Clay Pendant using one of our New Mats we sell in store for £4.00 and lump PMC

A Silver Leaf made using PMC Paste

Sunday we had an Introduction to Beads & Stringing. I have taught this workshop lots of times and have never seen the same necklace made twice. Its great to see how everybody uses colour and how they bring their own personalities and preferences into their designs. Again a great day with great people.

A Beaded Lariat - 45 inch with no clasp

For more images visit our Facebook page.

Progress

Well, I think that promising to blog daily was a lot to ask of myself considering we were working 12-14 hour days on the new studio. The bank holiday weekend work went really well, we got everything done we were hoping to. We now have a fire door, new walls, new kitchen (not up and running but installed), a new floor, and a completely white room. It's amazing the amount of work involved in creating a good blank canvas to work in. The amount of rubbish we have removed has filled two skips!!

Day One: After the kitchen wall had been removed - a very dirty, noisy and hard job. Kay was frightening with the sledge hammer!!

Day One: Room completely cleared, batons fixed to the wall ready for the foil backed plaster board. Me treating the walls for damp. (Got to remove all the ivy that has built up on the outside at some point)

Day Two: Plaster board up, polyfiller in holes.

Day Three: Floor down

Day Three: Kitchen started to being installed, decorating started.

Throughout the whole time Harry looking in on us!!

Day Four: Kitchen Installed, Door finished.

While the three of us were working (Kay, Jon and I) my little sister Lucy was away on holiday. Lucy got back on Monday and since then we have continued with the decorating. Got a little more to do but we're almost finished. I've had to try and get things in the shop back to normal this week so have been teaching workshops, private tuition and organising the shop. Today I have an Introduction to Precious Metal Clay to teach. Lucy is going to finish the painting then she has a childrens workshop to teach. Another busy day for us all!

New Workshop - Stage Two

Well, thanks to Mr McAllister (my neighbour and builder) we now have a hole in the wall ready to take a fire door...there's no going back now!! (not that I want to). Yesterday was a bit noisy and quite dusty but the hole is there ready for the carpenter who is coming to do his bit this afternoon. Kay and Gladys are on their way here ready to take down a wall and remove the old (quite awful) kitchen. I'm getting very excited now! I'll update with pictures later...

The transformation begins...

I've talking about it for ages and been wanting to do it for even longer but the time is here and the transformation of my stockroom into a Lampworking and Silversmithing workshop has begun!! We're at the very early stages but its all going to happen very quickly. Today and the past few weeks (on and off) Kay and I have been sorting, throwing out and clearing the stock/junk room. Here's how it looks now...

Workshop Stage One

Stuff to sort out

Its actually a little more cleared than the photo shows. I am too ashamed to show how it looked before the clear out began!! But here's some of the stuff that was in it. I have thrown away a skip load of old bits and bobs...I knew I was a hoarder but didn't realise quite how bad!! I have been taking the Kay attitude 'Just get rid of it!'.

So the plan is..

Wednesday - Hole for fire door by Mr McAllister

Thursday - Interior stud wall half taken out - Fire Door in by Carpenter

Friday - Plaster board up

Saturday - Painting / Floor

Sunday - New Kitchen

Monday - Painting

The team is: Kay (my sister), Jon (Kay's Boyf), and Me. Julie (Mum) will be looking after the shop.

Its going to look great!!

I'll shall be keeping a daily blog to keep you up to date so keep in touch