My Tortoise Ring Brings in the New Year!






Last time you read about the tortoise project, the silver clay was ready to fire.  After programming the kiln and waiting the required time, I held my breath and opened the door.  There it was!  Of course I had to try it on to see if it fit before I did anything else.  Success!


When silver clay gets fired, the organic part of the clay burns up and the heat fuses the micro filaments of silver to become 99% fine silver.  After the firing the silver looks white.  Once I brush it with a brass brush, the color turns to the silver color one expects.   

Now comes the sanding and polishing. 






I want to be able to see the pattern of the tortoise better and that requires a patina of liver of sulphur.  The water is warm when I put a small amount of the liver of sulphur gel, mix it, and put in the silver pieces. 


After the silver pieces start to darken to the color I want, they will go into a separate dish of water with baking soda to stop the color change.



 
The final polishing leaves the dark patina in the crevices.  And my ring is ready for the New Year!
Happy New Year Everyone!!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Learning As We Go!

Image
Viking knit is the oldest method of chain making and I've become fascinated by it.  Once I conquered the single knit, I decided to add beads.  I could have googled or asked how it was done but it seemed like something I could just figure out.  And I've learned a lot as I proceeded first with tumbled turquoise beads and then with pearls.  I thought I'd share a few of the things I've learned.   Iif you want a great tutorial on viking knit technique, Trina Ann at http://blog.trinaann.com/  has written a clear concise easy to understand tutorial.  I highly recommend it.    Tumbled tuquoise beads in viking knit  I used tumbled turquoise beads in the first viking knit chain and I did not really know what I was doing.  But I went right ahead and as it turned out, I liked the end result.  Since the beads were irregular in shape there was a random quality to the finished product. During that process, I began to really understand the technique of viking knit.  Loo
Read more

Spring Do-Over Challenge

Image
Re-do of Original Pieces Plus My Art Beads  I’m hooked!  The Do-Over Challenge that Jeannie Dukic ‘JKD Studio’ www.jkdjewelry.com offers has become something I look forward to.  Jeannie sends pieces of her ‘old’ jewelry to those of us who sign up and we get to create something new from them.  It does not matter if we like the piece she sends because we take it apart, add beads from our stash and create a completely new piece.  It’s a great way to recycle. Original Necklace and earrings When I received my piece to re-create, it lay on my bead try for a while as I sorted through the possibilities.  There were 3 art beads that might work but only one yelled, “Me!  Take me!”  Fortunately I had more of the polymer cane that was used for that bead because I wanted smaller one to go with the big chosen art bead.  The green chips were to be filler beads highlighting my art beads.  Large 'Take Me!' bead! I made two pair of earrings.  One pair could be part of
Read more

The Draw of the Mojave Desert or Why I Started Designing Jewelry

Image
When you look at my etsy stores you see Mojave Stone jewelry .  In the 1970's, my father and two brothers mined a stone in the Mojave Desert in the middle of nowhere California!  Actually, the mine was somewhat but not very close to Desert Center.  It had been a gold/silver mine before they staked their claim and began mining stone.  My family lived in Missouri and the stone had to be trucked from the desert after strip mining it.  I was married and away from home so I got to hear the stories of making a road, fighting off bees, surviving the heat, being careful of the critters and all the other 'Wild West' excitement.  And I did not have to rough it! Dad was going to retire (some day) and make and sell the polished cabochons (a stone cut and polished usually with a flat back and a convex top) for jewelry.  In the meantime, he had some distributors sell it, some metal smiths create pieces, and he trademarked it as 'Mojave Royal Blue' and 'Mojave Stone'.  He
Read more