A little bit of Experimenting!

There has been lots of experimenting this week. I have finally taken the plunge and decided to play with my PMC. I have had a little 16g bag sitting around for months, having bought it after going on a taster day. I had been putting it off for ages, as once that 50p sized piece of clay is gone, I am unlikely to be able to afford anymore for a while. Also on the taster day, most of the pieces we made were kiln fired, and we were shown torch firing, but this was the first time I had actually done it myself, so I was a little afraid I might ruin it all. I was inspired by the people on the Making Jewellery forum talking about the Masters Registry. Now I have only made a couple of sample bits, and I am a long way off doing anything like that, but it is definitely something I might consider in future if my efforts improve. It must be the academic in me, I love the idea of a course and set projects :) Playing with my PMC also gave me the opportunity to play with my silicone putty that I had given to me for christmas.

I love the putty! I love the feel of it, it is like soft sticky fudge, I could play with it all day. As it was I stopped myself when I was halfway through my pots. It had got to the point that I was picking up any old thing and making a mould of it, I think the cat had a lucky escape :) It was a lot of fun.

When it came to the clay I played with some buttons, and some of the moulds to create some textures, and I attempted to create a little pendant, although really I could have done with using some more clay and making it a bit bigger. Thankfully when it came to firing none of my little pieces melted and balled up, I think a couple of them came close, one of the little holes I had made sealed up, but all in all not a bad start.

Today I painted them with some liver of sulphur to help some of the texture stand out. It worked on some better than others, and I had forgotten just how much that stuff smells of eggs - yugh!

Finally, just thought I would share these amazing cookies. My friend Gayle gave me home prepared dry cookie mix for christmas so we decided to make them on Sunday. It was so easy, I hadn't realised how tedious I find measuring out ingredients. They were chocolate cookies and had chunks of white and milk chocolate, berries and nuts in them, and were absolutely lovely! :)