Crystal Affairs

Archive for November, 2009

Today I took a beginners PMC course with fantastic tutor Di Osman. I had so much fun and I don’t think I’ve ever been so pleased with something in such a short amount of time.
The best thing about taking a course (as opposed to experimenting at home) is that I gained the confidence (and had the resources in front of me) to try more unusual techniques; for example dipping the finished piece in liver of sulphur to get a marvellous effect (in the top left pieces in the picture)
We found out the effect varies depending on how warm the water you add the sulphur to is. As I used it later on; the water had cooled quite a bit and gave this almost golden effect. If used in warmer water the effect is a bluey purple one.
Who would have thought you could get a chunk of silver by moulding clay, baking it for 3 minutes with a hand held torch and polishing it off!
Finding materials and stamps to get certain effects will be my new quest. In the class we used rubber stamps, pastry cutters, leaves and leather to get fantastic results. Little tubes can be used to cut holes or make patterns like on my star.
PMC is expensive but I made all this with still some left over out of a 30g pack with costs around £30. I’m sure I have enough left for at least another pair of earrings or a pendant. That works out at £6 per set and considering your end result is a chunk of 99.9% silver I think it’s fantastic value for money.
Best of all we all achieved these sort of results just on our first day and there is so much more to learn. We don’t need to invest in lots of equipment, just a small blow torch (very cheap) and some files, cutters (also dead cheap) You can find textures outside such as leaves, pebbles, bark, stone etc…
I would definitely recommend having a go with PMC!