New Metal Clay Pieces (including wonderful kiln-produced colors), Geting Ready for the EtsyMetal Charm Swap, and Info on Titanium Druzy

Had my nose to the grindstone a lot lately… or near the kiln anyway.  Lots of metal clay goings on.

I’m taking part in EtsyMetal’s 12^th charm swap.  The idea is that 20 metal artists each make 22 identical charms and everyone involved gets a charm from everyone else (so each metal artist ends up with 20 different charms from the 20 participating artists).  The 21^st charm goes into the EtsyMetal team shop and the 22^nd charm gets added to the charm swap bracelet that also goes into the EtsyMetal team shop.  You can see some of the charms and charm bracelets in the store now (click on sold items as well as current items).  50% of the proceeds of the sale of the bracelet goes to a specially selected charity.

My charm is a hollow lentil made of copper with a dimensional spiral on each side. It’s about ¾ of an inch across.

 

A couple of metal clay pendants and earrings got added to my shop this week. You can check out the new stuff by clicking here.

And for the SRAJD Project Runway Challenge, these shoes... 

Inspired me to make this necklace...

I made this for a friend who has been more like family than friend lately. Just can’t thank her enough.

BTW, if you make jewelry and think you might be interested in trying to make etched pieces from photographs, check out my tutorial.

Any of you know what Titanium Drusy is?

Here’s a good (IMO) article on the subject (of how to tell real from fake).


Excerpt from the article: Drusies are created by a natural process that forms tiny crystals on a matrix surface... Drusies are beautiful in their own right, but they are often enhanced in a chemical process called Chemical Vapor Deposition(CVD) in which the drusies are exposed in a gaseous environment that contains a metal like titanium. During the process the metal bonds on a molecular level with the mineral resulting in a spectacular rainbow of colors. By varying the metals and process parameters a host of colors and shades can be created."

I’d like to thank Szarka Dianne Carter for letting me use example photos from her shop: Magpie Gemstones (I just think blogs should always show photos with stories.)


Oh, and last but not least, I wanted to show you so cool colors my bronze produced straight out of the kiln.  Well, actually, these photos are after the metal cooled down.  STRAIGHT out of the kiln they were even more saturated.