Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! Big sighs of happiness here as I unveil my first bronze pieces. I'm tickled pink (er, uh - - - should I say tickled bronze?) that they turned out well. I had asked my Yahoo List Metal Clay friends what seemed like a gazillion times if the little stainless steel container that I had would work. You see it is small - about 4" tall x 3" in diameter with a VERY TIGHT fitting lid. So after so long, I realized - hey, bronze clay is inexpensive, you WILL get some more soon - just go for it. So I did.



So after all the anticipation I was afraid something bad might happen if I used that little container with no holes or nuttin' on the lid . . . thingofitis . . . nothing bad happened. As a matter of fact I'm happy with the results. Rio Grande somehow lost my order from the convention. I was so upset as I had wanted to wait to play so badly. I was put on back order for the bronze clay, but had my little freebie pack of 30 grams from the convention to play with. Rio did send the coal based carbon which I'm told you can get pretty colors after a few firings of the coal. I did get some colors but they weren't striking - that's ok.

When I opened my package, I felt of it and could see cracking on the edges immediately. So I took the advice of Hadar and put it on a mat that I put olive oil on, then covered it with a plastic bag (that YouTube is great, isn't it?) and then spritzed it with water and glycerine, then rolled it under the plastic bag. Immediately the clay became putty in my hands. It was wonderful to work with. I didn't have any cracks at all. I am not fond of the natural cracked look, but lots of artists love them. Guess I haven't grown up enough to like cracks in my jewelry pieces yet.

I fired my 2 smallish pieces in the little bitty stainless steel container with plenty of coal on the bottom, sides and top. My firing schedule was 300° per hour to 1525°, hold for 3 hours. I set my kiln 25° lower than 1550° because after using Tonya Davidson's (Whole Lotta Whimsey) cone testing kit, I found that my kiln was running hot. Whole process took 7 hours, 50 minutes. Of course, as I drifted off to sleep that night, I wondered if my husband and I would be burned up in our beds as we slept. It's kind of unnerving leaving an appliance on for 3 hours upstairs in my Studio at 1,525°. Yikes!

When I awoke the next morning (couldn't sleep - it was like Christmas morning) much to my surprise and relief, we didn't burn up in the night after all. I got out of bed, crept up the stairs (well this is definitely NOT like Christmas 'cause kids generally go DOWN the stairs on Christmas morning, but you get the idea). The temperature readout on the kiln said 325° inside. I opened the kiln door so it would cool faster, got the BBQ pinchers and put that hot baby container on a kiln shelf to cool down some more. In about 20 minutes, it was cool enough to touch, so I grabbed a brown grocery bag and dumped the contents out, then went on a fishing expidition. Now that I think of it, I guess paper wasn't the best thing to pour it out on ... ugh. OK, well no harm done. Next time I'll get a pan.

I did not tumble my pieces, nor scratch brush them, but I did use the burnisher on both of them. For the fern pendant I painted on some thinned out Black Max and then wiped it dry. After drying I sanded it a bit with wet/dry 400 grit sandpaper.

All in all, I'm pleased as punch. Hopefully the rest of my order will be here soon! I sure wish you could see the sparkle on this piece.

Any comments you have would be appreciated. Good or helpful. Thanks for looking.