Sometimes when you fire metal clay you get the "Sparkly Effect" when it comes out of the kiln. I fired the above pieces today and they're REALLY sparkly. This is an effect of the silver particles fusing together and forming crystals on the surface. It's random and I don't think anyone really knows for sure how and when it will happen. And no one knows how to make this happen on purpose. These were not all the pieces in the kiln. The rest of them came out white, like they usually do. Vickie Hallmark wrote a blog post about this recently and went in to great detail about why this might happen. You can read it here, if you want a scientific hypothesis of why this might be.
My question to you, dear readers, is do I polish these to a shiny surface and then put on a patina, like I usually do, or leave them rough and sparkly? Polishing esentially flattens down the crystals and light doesn't reflect off of the peaks any more. I'm not sure I like it and I don't know how it will wear over time. What's your opinion?
1 comment:
i've never kept a sparkly piece either because my taste is to have it look old.
but, what you can do is save one piece with the sparkles and see what happens over time. i'll try that next time i get some sparkles.
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