A Miami Christmas Break

I know I've been kind of vague about these "new jewelry experiments" I keep referring to, so I want to explain just what it is that I've been working on. I recently discovered a material called Precious Metal Clay ("PMC") which is a clay, created by Mitsubishi, that contains microscopic particles of silver (or other precious metals). When fired, the clay particles burn away, revealing .999 fine silver. As you can imagine, the options are endless and I am brimming with ideas!

Here's the problem, I am hardly a sculptor so learning how to work with this material is quite the challenge! Well I got an informal lesson from a friend and spent many hours creating some test items, using stamps made from vintage buttons. When I put my carefully crafted items in a kiln (a very old kiln that doesn't give accurate temperature measurements), here's what we discovered an hour later:


That's right, a whole lot of nothing! Discouraging, right? Well here's what's giving me hope, the one success of this story:

So the experiments continue. First step, I have to buy a kiln. Here's the beauty that I will be ordering today:

I just need to decide if I should settle for the manual (cheaper) or splurge and get the digital version.

In other Miami Christmas break news, check out these pictures of Zero on Christmas morning, helping to open gifts (his favorite activity of the year!)



Update: I've settled on the Paragon SC2 kiln and just placed my order...completely digital and programmable, slightly more expensive, but hopefully worth it! ;)