Copper creations

The very lovely Anna aka the bunny maker from Half an Acre recently sold me her old mini kiln. (Thank you Anna!!)

This was so exciting because not only can I now fire larger silver pieces; I can now play with copper and bronze clay. I've had some copper art clay for a while. Apparently you can torch fire it, but I wasn't that successful so I've just been looking at it, all wrapped up and looking sad on my shelf.

But now, with my kiln, I can actually make stuff with it.

Here is my first (of many) copper leaves with some of my huge turquoise bead stash.

Don't you just love how copper and turquoise go together.

Just need to get a clasp finished and then I'll probably list it.

The clasp has seen me experimenting with copper plating! It seems to be pretty much impossible to get copper solder, so I use silver. For this clasp I soldered together copper wire to make a toggle, but this meant that the silver solder looked a bit odd. Simple solution - add a spare nail or screw to the old copper pickle pot (where the pickle has turned a shade of blue), and watch it fizz and copper plate over the solder. FANTASTIC.(This is why you only usually use copper tongs in a pickle pot - to avoid accidental plating!)

Love trying new stuff, and using new material. Hope you like my new copper creations!!