The Beading Gem

Brigid Goddess Pendant

Virginia Blakey, known as Vie by one and all, is the amazing jewelry designer of VisaVisJewelryLA. She is French but currently lives in Florida. What drew me to her work is her outstanding ancient history and myth inspired precious metal clay designs.

The seahorse is one of the strangest creatures. This marine fish belongs to the genus Hippocampus which is derived from Ancient Greek to mean horse - sea monster. It is hardly a monster they range from 0.6 to 14 inches tall.

Besides the horse-like head, the seahorse has bony armor, a prehensile tail and swims upright. The males are ideal mates and devoted fathers - they are monogamous, mating for life and as we all know, take on the pregnancy and birthing role, contractions and all.

Curious about metal clay?  Want to know what is involved?  Then check out this simple but pretty metal clay earrings tutorial by Karen Trexler for Cool Tools. Fine silver metal clay is actually the easiest to work with and you get high quality pieces in the end. Bronze and copper metal clay are both trickier to fire.

The main construction step of rolling out the clay and imprinting a texture will be familiar to any one who has worked with polymer clay. The instructor embeds the wire lengths at this stage.

Are you keen on precious metal jewelry like fine silver? Metal clay is a wonderful technique for producing unique and detailed work without having to go through any major metal work. You also do not need a lot of expensive tools.

Watch this tutorial by Lisel Crowley for Cool Tools as she handcrafts a shadow box pendant using fine silver metal clay and fills it with colored resin!  What a great idea!

Rick McKinney of KorTools is a former potter.  These days though he is busy running and developing a wonderful range of tools for people who work with clay - polymer clay and precious metal clay.

The distinctive black acrylic roller stamps and textures are light and durable. He has many great designs.  Rick sent me some samples to review and this is what I received :

Judy Larson is a most generous designer and instructor.  Over the years, she has sent me many tutorials to share with readers. Here is her latest.   She said, "This cuff was made to commemorate my nephew's wedding last summer and  I photographed the process. I made the cuffs for David to give to the mothers and his bride-to-be at the grooms dinner. It took way too long, but I finally put the tutorial together."

Polymer clay and metal clay artists typically use texture stamps to get beautiful relief work. But what if you have an original design but no texture stamp?  The solution is to use the tear away technique which works for polymer clay, metal clay and for those using rolling mills.

The technique involves printing out the design on a laser printer, then placing the design onto conditioned and rolled out polymer clay. After burnishing well, the paper is peeled off leaving tiny bits of polymer clay on the ink parts and becomes the raised designs.  Once the paper is baked, it becomes a delicate texture "plate" and is then ready for use.

There is a benefit to being friends with Helen Breil, the polymer clay artist and designer.  I actually get to see in real life her beautiful pendants!  And we get to talk shop at our lunch dates!  Her new silkscreens and texture stamp designs - a collaborative effort with her partner, Mike - are fabulous.

Firing base metal clays like copper and bronze is tricky. With silver metal clay, you can even torch small pieces to get rid of the binder to be left with lovely fine silver designs.  Copper and bronze metal clay is notoriously difficult. The designs have to be kiln fired and even then, the firing schedule will require individual experimentation.

I've long had the opinion that people who are good with polymer clay may well have an easier time learning to make metal clay jewelry.  Forming the clay, drying it and then firing it (with a torch or kiln) to remove the binder in the clay. This results in a near pure fine silver piece of jewelry. Seems a lot easier than using traditional metalsmithing techniques, don't you think?

Customizing your own high quality fine silver jewelry is possible if you use the metal clay technique. The one good thing about this technique is you don't need expensive tools unlike metal smithing. You can torch fire small pieces but for larger and more complex ones, the only way to go is to use a kiln.

Precious metal clay work is such a fantastic metal technique does not require a large investment in metal work tools.  Small pieces can easily be created with just a hand held torch eliminating the need for a kiln.  The end result is fine silver designs. Fine silver is nearly pure silver with none of the rapid tarnishing seen with sterling silver which has 7.5% copper.

Origami jewelry is simply lovely especially when done with Japanese paper. That's certainly one of the collections Canadian artist Gavin Canning offers on his Etsy store, FoldItCreations.  But he also sells hand folded metal clay origami jewelry - mostly in fine silver.

Fine silver metal clay is usually the clay of choice for metal clay artists.  Almost pure silver, it doesn't need firescale clean up after torching. And it is very slow to tarnish later because there is no copper. But it's not as strong as sterling silver especially for bracelets.  Recently, metal clay artist Lisel Crowley got to test out Cool Tool's new EZ960 Sterling Silver Clay.

Clay has never been my forte in a lifetime of art and crafts.  I blame it on plasticine which was the only clay available when I was a child.  It was not fun to use because it was too hard to manipulate...at least with little fingers. Then there was the disastrous pottery class when I was in my teens. We shall not talk about that!  But I've come around to clay especially for jewelry making!