Precious Metal Clay Flower Pendant
How to Create
1. Organise your workspace & apply a thin layer of olive oil to your hands, work surface and any items coming onto contact with PMC to avoid it sticking.
2. To make the textured disc, roll out a piece of clay on your chosen texture plate. Use the rolling pin and playing cards on either side to achieve an even depth, we started at 7 cards and went down to 5. Then to imprint the front of the disc, put another texture plate on top and rollover to imprint onto the clay - you will now have a texture on both sides.
3. Cut out a shape using a craft knife or cutter. Seal unused clay in a bag or pot to prevent drying. Cut a hole using a fine drinking straw for the jump ring to hang from.
4. Draw out design of flower onto PMC+ Sheet using biro or a soft pencil. Cut out carefully using the point of a sharp craft knife.
5. Decide on position of flower and paint areas of contact with paste, position flower, press in middle of flower to ensure surfaces are touching.
6. We used a simple setting method by making a small ball of PMC clay and pressing into it in a small Cubic Zirconia. We then attached this to the centre of the flower by using a dab of paste to bond the clay to the sheet and using a pin textured the edges which gave enough pressure to ensure a join when soldered. For further stone setting advice see PMC book C240. Put aside to dry overnight (sheet does not dry out so will remain flexible until fired) and then fire with a gas torch (see firing on page 77). As the flower petals are delicate and very fine be careful not to get too near them with the gas torch or they will melt. We supported the piece with a C19 Soldering Wig and held the flame on the underside of the piece. As with all techniques try test pieces first. Once cool, we burnished the flower petals and the high spots on the disc for a super polished finish (7)
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