Custom flower, start to finish

The drawing, done in Adobe Illustrator

Building the flower out of PMC. This gray thing is going to become .999 silver after firing in my kiln.

Just out of the kiln, where the organic binder has burned off and the silver particles have fused, created a pure silver flower. It's like magic, I tell you!

The finished piece, inlaid with tinted concrete



Here's a large custom piece I just finished which I photographed along the way to show the different stages of working with precious metal clay (PMC). I like to do my initial sketches on paper with a pen, but always take them in to Adobe Illustrator for my final template. Since PMC shrinks around 13%, it's very helpful to scale my drawings in Illustrator so I can get the finished size I want. The shrinkage does vary sometimes, but I can get very close to the final size I want this way. This piece is much larger than I usually work, 1 3/4" in diameter (45mm) I may have to make one for myself!