T3 Week 7 - Metal Clay - Adding Gold
This week is all about adding Gold to silver clay, we were shown two ways to do this. I have been looking forward to this week as I have never used Keum Boo. Keum Boo is an ancient Korean gilding technique used to apply thin layers of gold to silver. Keum Boo is 24 carat gold foil and is applied with heat and pressure and is such a lovely way to add a little bling or colour to pieces.
I created two pieces for this week as I had been wanting to make a certain peice of jewellery for a while.
We didn’t get a huge amount of keum boo in the kit (it is very expensive) and it came as a square so I didn’t have enough to cover my whole coin pendant, that was fine by me because that meant I was able to use some of it on my other piece.
The piece is made as normal when using metal clay and then once the piece has been fired you then add the keum boo by heating the piece on a hot plate (I use one to dry my work) but on a higher setting. Once the piece is hot place the keum boo sheet where you want it (or you can place it prior) and then using a burnisher you keep rubbing over the keum boo to ensure that it has adhered to the silver piece. Stsrt from the middle and work outwards. Once you are sure that all the sides are fully adhered then you let it cool.
Shaping my pendant
Firing pendant
Adding Keum Boo
Finished pendant
The second way is to add a little gold nugget to a pice of clay and fire it in place. For this you can use gold casting grain or like granulation, if you have any scrap (left over) gold this can be melted into granules and added. For this piece we only had to produce a small pebble of silver and incorporate the gold nuggest and ensure that is didn’t pop out once fired. When you fired metal clay there is always an element of shrinkage so you have to bear this in mind when you are making things like rings or this pebble and you need a necklace chain to go through it as we are not making an extra bail to put on it or adding a jump ring for the necklace to hang from.
Dried ready for firing
Getting the right glow
Firing my nugget
Finished pieces
Here is the extra piece I made as I really wanted to add some gold to the centre of my flower.
Flower on a bed of vermiculite.
Adding the keum boo
Finished pendant