All Things Metal Clay
An Expert Guide to Making & Selling Jewelry

Metalsmith Brigitte Martin has joined up with Schiffer Publishing to develop a book about the role humor plays in contemporary craft, and they welcome your submissions in image, text, audio, and video.

What’s so funny?

People of all ages and cultures respondto humor enthusiastically and
craft artwork definitely can be very funny !

Often, the work exudes a sense of the absurd due to exaggerated size
or by being executed in unusual materials. Craft artwork can be
highly ironic, political, sarcastic, or just plain amusing, and it
comes in a variety of media, such as metals, wood, fibers, ceramics,
glass, mixed media etc. Brigitte Martin has joined up with Schiffer
Publishing to develop a book about the role humor plays in
contemporary craft, and we welcome your submissions in image, text,
audio, and video!

They are looking for the following contributions:

– images of humorous artwork,
-texts/essays by the contributing artists, commenting about humorous
aspects in their artwork,
– audio art
– video art (the book will contain a CD of audio/video art depending
on qualifying submissions)
– essays by writers about the role of humor and fun in craft.

Can you show us humor in all its shades expressed through craft
artwork and text ? Who decides what’s funny and what isn’t ? What
topics are off-limits ? Is irony funny ? Sarcasm ? Are politics
funny ? Religion ? This book aims to provide the viewer with
entertainment, commentary, and of course, many fine craft pieces by
makers from all over the world. Humorb has no borders. Or does it ?
It might be interesting to learn how a piece will be hilarious in
China, but only garner mild astonishment in Sweden andvice versa.

This call is open to craft artists working in all craft media.
crafthaus membership is not required. International entries are
particularly welcome and encouraged ! The book is scheduled to be on
the market in 2012.

This is a rolling call: THE SOONER YOU SEND IN YOUR ENTRY the greater your chance to be considered ! Final deadline: March 1, 2011.

Artists:

To submit your work for initial consideration, please email: humorincraft (at) (our good friends) yahoo com

– low res image(s),

– information regarding media, measurements,

– brief blurb about your work and your views on the topic of “humor
in craft”

– Audio/Video artists: Please email an excerpt of your piece or
direct me to a website where your work can be heard/seen.

Once selected, you will receive detailed information about the image
requirements for printing, as well as other pertinent information
and a deadline for final submission.

Image requirements for eventual inclusion in book:

Be prepared to submit your photos at 300 dpi and sized 15 x 10
inches !
Format: tiff or jpg

AdobeRGB1998 preferred but not necessary
Pixel count for a 9 x 7 image is: 3500 x 2800 pixels

Writers:

Please submit a brief outline on your proposed essay topic, as well
as some information about you to (the same email as above.)

Metal Clay Magic, the online magazine, has a call for entries in their latest contest, Mixed Media Magic Challenge.

The editors write: You are challenged to create a piece of art that is at least 50% metal clay and any other medium such as polymer, sheet metal, glass or fabric.

Prizes are:
First Prize a selection of Rings from McDuck Creations
Second Place Glass cabochons and
Third place Linda’s Lid

See more details here: http://metalclaytoday.com

That’s an ad for a special issue, coming out in late October, from Art Jewelry Magazine. Metal Clay Jewelry will include reprints of favorite metal clay projects from Art Jewelry Magazine, plus three brand new ones.

That’s my Splat pendant there on the right. Rings by Linda Stiles Smith, additional jewelry in the bottom row by Michelle Ross, Kate Richbourg and Kim Otterbein.

See http://www.artjewelrymag.com to order the special issue.

The big buzz from the PMC Conference is the announcement from Mitsubishi Materials Corp. about the newest version of PMC — PMC PRO — available from Rio Grande in October.

It’s 90% silver, fired in activated carbon at 1400 degrees for one hours. What’s the hallmark, you wonder? .900

It is significantly stronger than all previous versions of PMC. You can still embed fine silver objects in it, if you do, you’ll do an open shelf firing first.

While some folks are not thrilled about the fact that it’s not fine silver, I’m thrilled with the strength. Before metal clay, I worked with conventional sterling silver (and still do sometimes), so to me the fact that it’s not fine silver doesn’t matter.

Here’s a chart about the strength, as compared to other versions of PMC:

The Metal Adventures Fast Fire BroznClay is also out! I’ve got a free sample to try out and will report back to you!

This bracelet was made by members of both the Windy City Chapter of the PMC Guild and the Chicago South Metal Clay Alliance. I love the slice of pizza by Katie Baum!

Below is a group shot of more bracelets that were raffled off in the second annual fundraiser by the metal clay community. The raffle was held Friday night at the PMC Conference.

The American Cancer Society received a check for $6,123.00 and the Bone Marrow Foundation received $3,629.00.

Thanks to Holly Gage, Carol Hamilton and all the generous makers of charms and buyers of raffle tickets!

Tags: bracelets, C4C, cancer, charms for charity, fundraiser

In the video above, from Rio Grande, they’re not using a coin, but are showing the process of creating a washer shape and making it into a ring.

If you prefer non-video ways of learning, here are three tutorials for you:

A series of photos showing the process of taking a quarter and turning it into a ring:

http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=283073.0

Here’s one with a half dollar, it’s also a longer and more detailed post:

http://www.frogsongstudio.com/coinringtut.html

And one more, in this one, they take away the words on the quarter:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a-silver-ring-for-25-cents

It occurs to me the same method could be used with metal clay, to make a seamless ring. Has anyone tried that?

This just in from Sabine Alienor:

I’m pleased to inform you that with Belgium and Canada we have just
created “Metallurgia, l’association internationale francophone des
pâtes de métal”.

It’s a brand-free, non-profit association who wants to share metal
clay informations for french-speaking people (70 countries!).

The website is http://www.metallurgia.org

We already have members in 4 countries on 3 continents (France, Belgium, Canada and Tunisia).

We are supported by all metal clay brands and we thank every body who has helped us (Special thanks to Katie Baum, Bill Struve, Hadar Jacobson, Ozgur Aycok and Caroline Bray).

Joining the association is free for this year, so you are all welcome!

Sabine Alienor SINGERY, France
President of Metallurgia : http://www.metallurgia.org

Here’s some of the best of the web from this week:

Helpful photography tips from Diane at Craftypod, over on CRAFT:

http://blog.craftzine.com

15 Point and Shoot Cameras Used by Pro Photographers, at Photoshelter:

http://blog.photoshelter.com

The recipe for homemade oil paste (the one with lavender oil) from Fusion, the Journal of the PMC Guild, reprinted with permission by Metal Clay Findings:

http://www.metalclayfindings.com

Mardon Jewelers tells the story of a custom filigree engagement ring, made with CAD plus traditional methods. Over on the Orchid Blog Network:

http://mardonjewelers.ganoksin.com

Helpful site for learning glass fusing: http://www.glass-fusing-made-easy.com

A wide variety of steel letter and number stamps are available on etsy from Sparkling Shamrock: http://www.etsy.com/shop/sparklingshamrock