It Must Be Fall

Leaves turning colors -
Velvet covering on the young buck's antlers -
Searching for that light weight jacket for walks -
Enjoying cool night and early morning breezes -
Visiting Flicker in the pine trees - he knows -
It must be fall!

And where did summer go?

In keeping with that theme, this is my new seed pod I'm adding to my collection.



The outer shell is made of copper metal clay and the pod is made of polymer clay.  It's fun to combine the two mediums.  Interested in the process?  Keep reading!

If anyone has been following my FaceBook posts, you know I've been learning about and testing the temperatures of my new Paragon E12A kiln.  The interior temperature is not the same as the digital readout so I've been making my own chart.  While doing this testing I decided to make something from my clay instead of just strips and circles (I'm doing that too).  What better that a seedpod?

The copper clay is Hadar's Friendly copper clay and it is fired in two stages.  A good test for the temperature testing.  I ended up firing the clay leaves 3 times to get it to sinter (a term for clay that actually becomes metal when heated to the correct temperature).  The following picture shows the piece after 2 firings when the leaves looked like metal when sanded.



When one of the leaves fell off and shattered it was obvious that the clay had not reached the right temperature inside.  The remaining piece went back in the kiln to fire again.  That time worked! 

Back of the seed pod after sintering

I left the inside rough to give the polymer clay a place to grab on when I fired it in the copper.  That way I did not have to glue the pieces together. 



Next I made the inner seed pod with a veneer over a ball of polymer and textured it.  I cured the polymer in the copper and proceeded to sand and buff it.  The polymer has a thin coat of liquid polymer dried with a heat gun to give it a crystal clear shine.  That shine gives a nice contrast to the more rustic copper shell. 



The seed pod sits on a small flat area and nestles in with other real and metal pods.  Fun for Fall.

Thanks for visiting!