Jewellery is always a popular choice for a Christmas gift. Unique and personalised earrings, pendants, brooches, necklaces and cuff are big sellers every year in the build up to Christmas.

Precious metal clay (PMC) is an ideal material for making jewellery. It consists of small particles of metals such as silver, gold, platinum or copper, mixed with organic binder and water. Metal clay or art clay as it is also known as can be fired in a variety of ways including in a kiln, gas stove or a hand held gas torch. Through the process of being fired the binder burns away leaving the pure sintered metal.

PMC is easily shaped and textured. It offers speed ease and expressive opportunity when capturing textures, generating forms and modelling. Silver metal clay results in objects containing almost pure silver, which is perfected suited for enamelling. Gold clay is more expensive, but the end product is stunning when making solid gold objects or making accents on silver pieces.

A great way to personalise jewellery using clay is to use fingerprint impressions. Having your child’s fingerprint or the fingerprint of a loved one on a pendant or charm bracelet, gives beautiful jewellery that sentimental touch. The barriers to making personalised jewellery of this kind are low.

To make a fingerprint pendant, condition a small ball of polymer clay. Use a wooden dowel as a rolling pin to roll out the clay to an even 18-inch thickness for a pendant on a sheet of wax paper. Press a finger into the clay and move it gently from side to side to create good impression. Centre a metal cutting tool over the impression and use it to remove the excess clay. Create a small hole at the top of the pendant to create a hole for the chain. Once the clay has hardened use a jar of real metal powder and paint the powder over the clay covering the front back and edges. Place the pendent in an oven, baking the clay to the manufacturer’s instructions. Glaze the pendent by brushing or dipping to seal the metallic power to the clay.

Stencils are another form of making an impression on clay. PMC it is heated up to high temperatures to transform to its metallic state. In this process there is a point where the PMC is at a semi-liquid state. Whilst the clay is partly liquid, patterns can be made through the use of stencils.

A stencil of any pattern can be used made easily using a thin sheet of brass. Brass is an ideal material for stencilling because it is cheap, rigid and tough enough to stand up to multiple uses. Books of copyright-free patterns can be purchased, giving an artist huge variety and flexibility with patterns.

Precious metal clay (PMC) can also be made unique or personalised through etching. Traditionally etching is carried out using strong acids to dissolve the surface of the metal. Precious metal clay allows you to create a beautiful etching effect by only using water.

Author Bio: Adam Hunter – E-commerce Marketing Manager of cooksongold.com. Cookson Precious Metals offer a choice of supplies from over 10,000 products including jewellery findings, jewellery tools, art clay silver and precious metal sheet – gold, silver, platinum and palladium plus jewellery storage and technical information for jewellers, jobbers, designer, craftsmen, artisans and students.

Category: Arts and Crafts
Keywords: jewellery, jewelry, pmc, precious metal clay, silver clay, art clay silver, crafts, jewellery making