The Metal Studio - Projects from July

PMC Peacock: brainstorming stone placement

PMC Peacock Before Firing.

In between metal fabrication projects, I've been toying with PMC -- Precious Metal Clay.   PMC is basically fine silver imbedded in a clay medium that once fired in a kiln, the medium is burnt off, leaving the clay behind.  In this piece, I've rolled out PMC and stamp embossed it with a peacock pattern, I cut the shape out that I wanted, dried it and planned embellishments with CZs, or lab grown diamonds.  These stones will be fired into the piece with no damage to them during firing due to their high heat threshold.  

Reticulated Silver With Black Pearl

The most recent project I finished was a tiny purple black pearl set in a 1' x 1.5' piece of reticulated silver. Reticulation is a process where you heat sterling silver sheet to almost melting, after having heated it a few times to bring the fine silver to the surface.  One of the jeweler suppliers I use, Rio Grande, has a lot of great step by step tutorials.  Here's a link to their tutorial on reticulation, but I must also advise:

kids, don't do this at home.