October project part 1 - charm bracelet experiments

I am skipping a post about my September project, partly because it isn't finished and partly because the playing about I did in this post kind of informs it and has changed my approach.

October's project is a charm bracelet using the beads from the August project and a new pack of silver clay to make silver charms for it.

I was supposed to use the circular cutter from the June project or some little card heart templates.  I of course chose neither. Instead I got some metal clay cutters from Jeweller Maker.

These are the charm bracelets I have to play with

I decided to use a mixture of cutters and textures. I used some texture plates from Kernowcraft, which I really liked and were easy to use with the clay. I also used some textured rubber stamps and some skeleton leaves and a letter stamp.  Really this was all about having a play and seeing what happened.  I only used leftover clay from other projects but i think it was a good use.

Here are the charms drying out with a rogue squirrel who will be discussed later.

Post firing 

After firing and polishing, I decided to experiment with some liver of sulphur, which is a solution that creates a patina on silver (an oxidation layer) and gives it an antique look. So some of them got dunked, they only need a few seconds.  The liver of sulphur stinks, you have to make a warm water solution but past experience with similar chemicals at work meant I wore latex gloves and used plastic tweezers throughout as this is nasty stuff!

After polishing but before dunking in liver of sulphur.  The liver of sulphur is in a stylish half pint mug. 

After dunking, all blackened

Leaf shapes detail

 After rinsing, I experimented with polishing the charms to see the effect of removing different levels of the patina. I am really pleased with the different effects. I love the heart one and the letter. I will be using skeleton leaves again as it was really effective. I am not sure about the flower shape, it might work better if I use a larger flower shape.

Finished charms!