Jewelry, inspired by Nature
Materials used for jewellery making
Springtime, time for cleaning up one’s closet. Everybody has somewhere a piece of antique silverware… wow, it rhymes 🙂 But is the precious grandmother’s piece real silver? One can always go to the specialist to have it tested, but as … Continued
Is PMC Standard really THE most difficult silver clay to solder? If you like challenges, try to solder PMC Pro. Soldering is inevitable if you want to integrate (semi)precious stones into your pieces. Or even larger CZ stones, because owing … Continued
The RTFM (“read the f..abulous manual”) instruction is sometimes given to people who look for easy answers. But the opposite can also be true: the manual provides a seemingly easy answer, which – if you think a bit – is … Continued
Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc. By comparison, bronze is principally an alloy of copper and tin. Brass is used for different applications such as locks, gears, bearings, zippers, doorknobs and electrical applications; and extensively in musical instruments … Continued
Tumbled gemstones are magical. They offer such a variety of size, shape and color! And last but not least they are inexpensive too. I have written about tumbled gemstones before, in this blog. The “raw” beauty of these stones has … Continued
Silver clay is a wonderful material, but it has its constraints. It is difficult to avoid cracks. In my opinion main crack causes are shrinkage, porosity, and contamination. Shrinkage manifests itself mainly in small cracks around the stone (or other … Continued
So far this blog has been about my hobby – making jewelry from precious metal clay and sterling silver. Now I am going to do something which is in line with my translator’s profession – publish a small three-lingual glossary … Continued
Firing is probably the most exciting part of working with PMC Pro. It’s where a special firing procedure comes in: firing in a container filled with activated carbon. When ordering my first PMC Pro pack from Cool Tools, I bought … Continued
Working on greenware (filing, sanding, carving) is an essential part of precious metal clay processing. And, of course, I had high expectations from PMC Pro, advertised as an extra strong precious metal clay. Therefore my first Pro-project has been quite … Continued
Actually, it is not that new. PMC Pro™ has been introduced by Mitsubishi in 2010, I bought it from Cool Tools in 2011. PMC Pro™ is an alloy of fine silver and copper. 90% silver, 10% copper. As a fan … Continued