I have always wanted chronicle the process of making one of our pieces. So, I figured if I’m going to take the time to take all the pictures, I might as well post it here and share our process with all of you…
This shows the steps that we go through to make one of our best sellers – the wax seal letter charm…
Ok, here we go…
This is how it all starts, Art Clay Silver and an actual wax seal.
This is the piece still in clay form, once we press it out it needs to dry completely before we put it in the kiln.
This is where the magic happens!
Ready to go!
Just getting started… The silver needs to get up to 1400 degrees
Almost there…
All done! Ready to cool down…
Now that, my friends, is hot!
This is the silver straight out of the kiln, it may look like the clay form, but it is actually pure silver now. It comes out of the kiln with a white coating.
We use a wire brush to clean the silver, a little rubbing and the silver starts to show through.
We use Patina Gel to oxidize the pieces.
We keep them in the gel until they get nice and dark.
And then we start to polish using 3M polishing papers. There are 6 colors – ranging from 400 grit all the way up to 8000 grit.
We polish…
and polish…
and polish…
and polish…
and polish…
and polish… whew!
Now it’s time to drill the hole… very carefully! This is usually a job my husband does, because I’m not very good at it!
All done!
No comments:
Post a Comment