A Silver Extravaganza!

Was having a great time with PMC today. New shapes, new textures. Still need to patina them. And then finish with beads, wire, findings, maybe a little more *leather*

I told my PMC class the other day that I only had two rules - use olive oil or my beeswax based lotion on their hands and all the textures; and they should keep their PMC wrapped or wet when not working with it. During class, I reminded them that when they put their finished pieces on the hot plate they needed to use the tweezers to take them off, because the plate got them too hot to handle with their bare hands. At one point one of the students forget and said, "Maybe you need to have three rules" :). So I did, I had three rules. Yesterday, I came up with a 4th rule, especially when teaching at our home. Never transfer kiln fired pieces from the kiln across two feet of deck to the tumbler. You may drop a student's piece down the space between two deck boards. Too far down for tweezers. Next, I fashioned a little tiny fish net, not sturdy enough to dig under the fish to get it out. Then we tried packing tape, retrieved a lot of dirt. Finally, I thought - tacky tape for the walls! And it worked, got the fish up far enough for me to grab it off the sticky end with the tweezers when it got close enought to the top! No missing pieces. Though I discovered that not all of my students gave me little lists of their pieces. So tomorrow, I try to track down names and email addresses. And I'll be posting more photos tomorrow, hoping that you (BABE! students) are reading and will let me know which pieces are yours! Thanks all!