PMC spacers

A couple of weeks ago, a little while after Missy's op, she had a minor set back when she started bleeding. The vet wasn't concerned as long as she was bright and not listless. He said it's not uncommon for a blood clot to form at the site of the operation if she'd overdone something. As long as it only lasted 3-4 days, then it wasn't anying to worry about. Keeping a usually active dog quiet for 10 days is really difficult, you can't exactly nail their paws to the ground!

Anyway, it meant me keeping a close eye on her as the vet said to bring her straight back immediately if she started to act like she was feeling poorly. Instead of beadmaking in the garden studio with her possibly risking infection from lying on the grass, I worked indoors and made some PMC* spacers that I'd been wanting to try for ages to fit Pandora, Biagi, Troll etc. bracelets. Instead of drying the PMC flat, when the clay was still leather hard, I draped them over pencils, knitting needles, toothpicks etc to get different degrees of wavy-ness from them so when you've got more than one on your bracelet, it sets up different rythyms of spaces.

I got round to firing and polishing them up on Friday and the above photograph is the result.

They were really popular with my large hole Pandora style bead customers on Saturday. They all sold out, so thanks, Missy; I have a new product line!

Here is another photograph of a few on my own Pandora bracelet and you'll notice that the edges have been decorated on a couple. I ran out of time but I was going to patina these with liver of sulphur and then polish so the patina just rested in the grooves/holes. I shall be making more very soon and I have lots of ideas for variations and hopefully I'll have time to patina these before I sell them.

* For non-jewellery makers, PMC stands for Precious Metal Clay. It is made from particles of fine silver, water and binder combined to make clay which is similar in texture to plasticine. It can be moulded, cut and shaped anyway you like when it's wet. When it's dry, you fire it in a kiln, the binder burns away, leaving behind fine pure silver.