Great suggestion Jan!

Jan J. commented a couple of posts ago that I should do gourd birdhouse, and here it is, both in progress and the finished piece. You can see more photos of it at my Etsy shop here. Thanks for the great idea Jan!

I work in silver precious metal clay (PMC), which is silver that's in clay form. The basic gourd shape was constructed around a form that I made, then I let the PMC dry and I cut it in half to get the form out. I re-attached the two halves, added the vines and leaves, and sculpted and attached the bird. The loop at the top is fine silver wire. The first photo shows the piece right before I put it into my kiln. I fired it at 1500 degrees for 2 hours, and the clay binder burned off and the silver particles fused. Kind of like magic!