My girlfriend says I'm a cheapskate when it comes to buying presents but I'm just one of those people who really likes to make things for people. I love getting handmade things I think it's alot more meaningful to get something handmade as a gift even if it's just a simple hand drawn card or a pot of homemade jam. I wanted to make some silver jewelry for my girlfriend so I got some of this cool stuff called pmc3 silver made by mitsubishi. It's a special type of clay made from pure silver bound together with organic binder, when 'fired' you are left with pure silver! It's possible to create very fine detail and with practice you can create real works of art, you can also get pmc3 gold to make gold jewelry!
The clay is quite expensive about £2 a gram so I only got a small packet. It's quite a fiddly job with big clumsy hands becase it's sticky, but after a while you get the hang of it. I rolled it thin on a piece of silicon paper, then picked a Sage leaf from the garden and pressed it into the clay to imprint the details. Then I made a small hole to put a jump ring through, cut it out and left it to dry completely which took about a week. .
Next I carefully peeled it off the paper, put it on a firebrick, and burned it with a blowtorch to fire it and burn off the binder. After firing it was grey, so needed a good polish to get it nice and shiny.
Good for making rings and pendants that weigh about 8 grams. Bigger chunkier items would need to be fired for longer in a kiln to achieve good results.