Great suggestion Jan!

Ready to fire

Finished

Jan J. commented a couple of posts ago that I should do gourd birdhouse, and here it is, both in progress and the finished piece. You can see more photos of it at my Etsy shop here. Thanks for the great idea Jan!

I work in silver precious metal clay (PMC), which is silver that's in clay form. The basic gourd shape was constructed around a form that I made, then I let the PMC dry and I cut it in half to get the form out. I re-attached the two halves, added the vines and leaves, and sculpted and attached the bird. The loop at the top is fine silver wire. The first photo shows the piece right before I put it into my kiln. I fired it at 1500 degrees for 2 hours, and the clay binder burned off and the silver particles fused. Kind of like magic!

Recent custom work

Here are a couple of recent custom pieces that I remembered to photograph before sending out. I start with a photo, and turn it in to a black and white drawing, which I then etch on to a brass plate. I use the brass plate to imprint the image in to the silver with. The black cat, Berkley, was quite a challenge since there was not much detail to work with. I think the piece turned out pretty good though. Frida the Chihuahua was fun, especially with that tongue sticking out!

Birdhouses

Here's my latest series, a collection of birdhouses. When I sat down my original plan was to do something with a bird's nest and baby birds, but I quickly ended up doing these instead! They are quite enjoyable to build, and I'm mulling over other house ideas at the moment.

Molly the Barn Owl and her babies

If haven't seen this yet, you simply must go check it out! It's a live web cam that shows a barn owl named Molly and her 4 recently hatched babies. Here's the link: http://www.ustream.tv/theowlbox Be warned though - it's totally addictive!

Spring color!

I've been working on lots of new stuff lately! Here's a few them, all available at my Etsy shop.

Interview and giveaway at Etsy Stalker!

I did an interview and am giving away a tiny owl necklace over on the Etsy Stalker blog, you can read it and enter here: http://etsystalker.com/?p=8199

Blue whale necklace, sketch to finished piece

Never throw old sketch books and drawings away! I came across a treasure trove of 8 year old sketches the other day, including the little whale on the left. I've been thinking about doing a whale so the timing was perfect! I don't have a scanner so I took a photo of the drawing and then opened it up in Adobe Illustrator. I traced it and worked out the shape so it would work as a pendant. Since precious metal clay shrinks 12%-15%, I use Illustrator to figure out what the size should be to start with to get the finished size I want. All I do is get the drawing the size I want my piece to be, and then scale it up 113%. I then use that as my template. It's a very accurate way to work with the shrinkage inherent to all metal clays.