Riveting and Patinas and Metal Clay Lentils

Wild September.... hoping for a mellower October.

No one to blame but myself, so this can't be much of a complaint. Maybe more of an observation.

I'll start backwards.

Here are some photos I took from today's class.

First I was admiring Angela's cuff bracelet. She made it after learning to etch in my workshop last week.



Then while we were waiting for the kiln to finish (we started on metal clay yesterday), we did some riveting. There are still some issues to work out if we want to use the crazy expensive riveting tool I have (ugh!), but here are some eyelets my student was able to set.



And I reverted to the old fashioned method of making them by hand using fine silver wire.



BTW, that red patina on the background of my pendant was totally an accident (but such a happy one I kept it). I was soldering that jumpring bail onto the back of the pendant and when quenched it and was just about to drop it into the pickle pot, I saw this cool red color and not one speck of oxidation. So I decided to leave it as is and just put some Ren wax on it.

This piece will be going into my secondary Etsy shop.

So after that, we got our lentils and bead caps from the kiln. Here's the lentils looked like after they cooled.



To show my student what sealant does to these lovely heat patinas, I demo'd on mine.



After that, we both cleaned our lentils then gave them LOS baths. Here's my student's. These cell phone photos don't do any kind of justice to the fabulousness of her bronze pendant. The colors were beautiful (but again, who knows how long they'll last).





And here's one of her own lampwork beads with bronze caps (made from metal clay). She also set the tubing by hand (because that beautiful bead was too big for my little Impress bead liner).