At last! It’s not like I’ve been waiting for a repair, or anything like that. Summer is just so full of good things that there is hardly room to work or breath. But, I’ve managed to do both lately.
While firing a batch of silver clay pieces, I got out the bronze and copper clay for the first time since June. With the current high price of silver clay, I felt less constrained with the base metals. My goal this week, with all three kinds of clay, was to come up with some birds for a little show on Sunday at the home of my sister-in-law Karen and her husband Hugh. Birds play a big part in our lives and it’s going to be fun to see what several friends have made for “Island Birds,” at the Smallwood’s house on Sunday, August 8 from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Everyone is welcome to come and the various birds will be for sale. Jim Bright has bird carvings, Karen and Hugh have paintings, Rick Alley has paintings, Joy Sprague has photographs, Jeri Spurling has bird-inspired floor cloths, and I will have some birdy beads on necklaces and earrings. This could be the year I start my Christmas shopping early!
Silver pieces out of the kiln and headed for the tumbler:
Bronze and copper pieces ready for the kiln. It’s such a different firing process from silver. Everything above went easily into one load. Whereas the pieces below required two loads. My fingers are crossed that the first batch wasn’t too crowded, and will have sintered properly.
Barbara S Fernald Jewelry 
Love the birdies! did you use a punch for the silver ones?
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Hi Sue,
I used a template I made years ago for the silver birds. The ones on the wire are flat beads. Two flat PMC sides put together with a piece of wax wire in between. Then used paper punches to cut the surface designs from PMC sheet.
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Very cool! Wish I could be there Sunday.
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I wish you could too!
xoxo
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Those birdies are very sweet. I can’t wait to see what you do with them. I can imagine all sorts of things. I do know what you mean about summer being filled to the brim with goodness. I can hardly believe it is August already.
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Thanks LeAnn. It was fun to do something different. I’ll be putting all the bird stuff together on Friday, so I’ll take some photos. I’m hoping to work in another of your bird beads in a piece for the show. (Thursday is a day of off-island errands for me.)
Summer going too fast!
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can’t wait to see what happens with these!
xo
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Yeah, a few birds finally showed up in my studio!
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