More Fun with Metal Clay

I've got a half dozen craft show applications sitting in the office, my Etsy shop has been totally neglected, and my website is down pending some new pictures.  So I've been spending a lot of time working on some new silver designs. Wanting to try with silver the techniques I used with bronze clay, I spent another week buried  in my workshop.

Trying to create open work curlicues with silver is a bit different from  bronze.  Silver hardens more quickly and seems to be more fragile when dry.  It breaks more easily.  It took me a while to get used to the feel again so I started with some simpler pieces.

Like flowers and leaves, the curlicues are much easier to put on a solid surface.







But I eventually created a pair of earrings that I really like.

And later a pendant set with a genuine ruby cabochon.

But the best piece I made this past week was actually one I made using a tutorial.  Now there are lots of tutorials out there and they are a great way to learn new techniques.  I just haven't found one for anything I really wanted to try.  But in an older issue of Metal Clay magazine I found a tutorial by Anna Mazon.  She's a metal clay artist and instructor from Poland.  While she's the expert on the open work technique I've been working on, her tutorial is for a 3-dimensional pendant called "Hidden Pearl".  I spent several hours on this piece and I have to say that it's really nice to have all the logistics of the design already figured out.  (Sometimes that takes more time than the design itself.) So I just followed her very clear instructions and pictures and here's the result--

I haven't decided yet if I'll put this one up for sale or just keep it for myself.