The Tortoise Project Continues!



2 Silver Clay Tortoises and 1 original sculpture



The last post about the tortoise left you hanging…..... with a mold ready to use!  The original sculpture was done with polymer clay and baked.  The mold was made with 2 part mold compound and I was concerned about his head and made a second one.  Just a note here….the first one was the best!

For those of you not too familiar with silver metal clay, here is a brief description.  The clay is made of micro filaments of silver (recycled I understand) and blended with an organic mixture so the clay is malleable.  It dries pretty quickly so it is important to work quickly and keep the clay moist. 

Getting the two parts ready

In the case of my tortoise, I conditioned the clay and pressed it into both parts of the mold and let it dry.  Then I removed it from the mold and was anxious to see how the two parts fit together.  With a little adjustment they did well!  After cleaning the insides and sanding them so that the sides were thinner, I attached top and bottom with wet clay. 



Top and Bottom Attached



Now I needed to accentuate the design, clean up the rough clay and sand and polish.  Since I have two turtles from two molds, I decided to make one as a pendant and one as a ring.  For the pendant I drilled small holes for wire to go through the body and for the ring I made a textured band.  The clay shrinks so I made the ring 1 ½ sizes larger than my finger.

Textured ring band

All ready to fire!