Top: Fired & Polished PMC pendant. Middle: Fired PMC pendant. Bottom: Unfired PMC pendant
Sometimes it just takes a deadline to put a fire under your butt and get something finished. Such was the case with this Precious Metal Clay (PMC) Fine Silver dragonfly pin, still in progress, that I promised as a silent auction item to our local Alzheimer's Association fundraiser. Because the PMC is so fragile before it is fired, I accidentally broke off one or more wings and finally succeeded on the FOURTH version. Version one, in the middle with the blue eyes, also turned out all right, but I thought it was too big. Little did I know the smaller wings would cause me so much trouble.
Well, what did I learn through this? For one thing, perseverance, since I had promised this to a fundraiser, I had to finish it. I couldn't just get frustrated and quit. I just had to keep on keeping on. What else? Well, I took all the broken off wings, "glued" them together with syringe clay, and I'm going to fire them first THEN attach them to the bodies. If this works, I'm much more likely to make more of these in the future.
As long as you learn something from your mistakes, nothing is lost but a little time.
I'll post a photo of the finished dragonfly pendant in my next blog. This project taken from Irina Miech's book, "Inventive Metal Clay for Beaders".
