The Sparkly Tree Silver and Crystal clay mirror.

This was a Christmas gift for my mother in law who is allergic to most metal but though she has been very supportive of my jewellery making endeavours can't wear any of it! So this was my solution, mixing the media of silver clay with crystal clay. So this was the full and quite difficult process. 

The idea behind it was a family tree, with each grandchild's birthstone represented as a crystal. (I will have to make her something else if we get any more babies in the family)  

I sketched a rough scale version of how I wanted it to look. 

I transferred the rough image to a white ceramic tile. I then "drew" the tree using silver clay in a syringe with a fine tip.

This is the tree drying on the tile. I left it 24 hours.

I transferred the clay to my firing block but typically it broke! I repaired it and strengthened the tree with multiple thin layers of silver clay paste. This took days and days to get right. It had to be left to dry in between layers for 24 hours. 

Once it was fired and carefully cleaned up and polished  I mixed up some crystal clay. 

                 (you can see how to do that here) and added the tree and the birthstone crystals.

I added AB crystals at random  until I was happy with the overall look and left it to harden for 12 hours.

My mother in law really liked it so it was worth the effort :)