January 2012 Meeting

The January meeting of the Kansas City Precious Metal Clay Guild will be Tuesday, January 17 at 7:00 p.m. at Harder Driving School, 10362 Mastin. Overland Park, KS 66214

The hands-on demo/topic will be lead by one of our newer members, Kim Keane. Kim is a polymer clay artist who will show us how to draw (or use our Zentangle skills learned from Susan Silvy last fall) onto pre-cured polymer clay.

Cured clay pieces will be provided. Please bring your Micron or Millennium Pen #01 and optional 005 pen. Sakura is the name brand of the pens which work best. Available at Michael's. Those who participated in the fall Zentangle meeting received a pen in their kit.

This is the first meeting of 2012 and member dues are now due. $24 per year provides our budget - which will be used to cover materials costs for more hands-on projects at our meetings. That's just $2 a month for lots of fun learning experiences. Check back here or check our website for the 2012 program schedule.

January 18, 2011 Meeting Demo Info

 Jules Van Hoecke will demo how to make silver balls for decorating your PMC pieces and how to do the same with scrap PMC (fired). AND, we'll make decorative head pins with silver wire and clay. Sounds like an interesting evening!






 Bring your own wire (20 ga FINE silver), clay and tools. Torch optional. Wire and PMC will be available to purchase at the meeting. We hope to use the on-site kiln to fire finished headpins.

Tools and Supplies needed to make your own decorative head pins

    * torch ( + firing equipment i.e. charcoal block, protective surface, etc)
    * 20 ga fine silver wire (we have some if you want to buy)
    * clay
    * wire cutters
    * tools needed to work with clay
    * scraps silver (fired pmc) or silver wire ( for making decorative balls)

If you have ever accidentally melted your silver with a torch, you know how frustrating that can be. However, you can also learn to intentionally melt silver into perfect little balls of metal - it's nearly as fun as hammering or kneading bread - a little destructive aggression can be channeled into something useful!

Jules will bring tools but bring your own set up if you really want to make some headpins during the meeting. We'll try to fire up Carol's kiln and fire what we make.

Note: Fine silver wire must be used for making headpins with PMC heads. Sterling wire may be used to make simple balled wire headpins. 20 or 22 ga is best.

Meeting starts at 7 pm.
 Don't forget our first CHALLENGE - due in May 2011.