Porcelain Jewellery for Beginners

Written by Winnie Tam


Making large objects from clay takes a lot of patience, sweat and dexterity, but making tiny pieces of jewellery can be another challenge altogether. For those of you who have decided to venture off into this delicate art form, here’s a few tips to get you started and keep you onrepparttar path to making some fine, wearable pieces you can be proud of.

List of Supplies:

Small sponge Wooden rolling pin Hole cutter Cutting wire Pottery knife Fine sable watercolour brushes Metal findings (for earrings and brooches) Face mask (for firing)

Be Prepared

You want to make sure you have everything at your finger tips so that you don’t have to run torepparttar 116036 store midway and come back to a hardened un-useable lump of clay. You can find supplies at most pottery stores. Greenbarn Pottery Supplies in Surrey, BC is one of my favourites.

The Right Clay forrepparttar 116037 Right Job

Porcelain isrepparttar 116038 best type of clay to use for jewellery because of its refined quality. It is smooth, pure and becomes very hard after being fired at 2200 degrees.

Shaping Techniques

It can be a fun exercise to pound away at your clay and throw great lumps to vent your frustrations, but for jewellery, a more delicate touch is required.

After rollingrepparttar 116039 clay to about 1/8 inches thick, use your pre-shaped cutter to press down and create uniform shapes, just like making cookies. Or forrepparttar 116040 more adventurous types, make your own shapes using dry hands, and a small sponge to smooth outrepparttar 116041 edges. Using a picture for reference always helps but remember to makerepparttar 116042 pieces slightly larger to allow for shrinkage. A word of warning: thin shapes can be broken very easily. For example,repparttar 116043 thin legs of animals should be avoided. For a look at some effective shapes, take a look atrepparttar 116044 animal pins on my website at www.winnietam.ca.

Making Holes

Now that you have your shapes ready, it’s time to put in holes for earrings, necklace chains or brooches. This can be done by using hole cutters of varying sizes, found at any pottery store. Don’t makerepparttar 116045 holes too close torepparttar 116046 edges, as they can easily break.

Painting

This requires good eyesight forrepparttar 116047 fine details and a steady hand. Under glazes arerepparttar 116048 only type of colour to use as they can withstandrepparttar 116049 high temperature of firing. The only drawback is that you cannot seerepparttar 116050 exact colour untilrepparttar 116051 final firing, so this will take some trial and error.

Sheet music – violin and other string instruments

Written by Helen Baxter


The violin is a bowed stringed instrument and isrepparttar highest pitched member ofrepparttar 116035 violin family. It sits along side its cousins –repparttar 116036 other members ofrepparttar 116037 violin family -repparttar 116038 viola, cello, and double bass. The bow ofrepparttar 116039 violin is a narrow, slightly incurved stick of Pernambuco about 75 cm long, with a band of horsehair stretched from end to end ofrepparttar 116040 bowstick. The violin has four strings tuned a fifth apart, torepparttar 116041 notes g, d’, a’, e’’: On early violinsrepparttar 116042 strings were of pure gut. Today they may be of gut, gut wound with aluminum or silver, steel, or perlon.

Sheet music - violin is often provided to students byrepparttar 116043 conductors of their orchestras or their private teachers who wish to learn to play this fine instrument. For players who aren't officially students anywhere, however, there are a wide variety of sources from which to obtain sheet music. Very recently,repparttar 116044 Internet may actually have surpassed music stores asrepparttar 116045 best place to find new pieces to play.

An enormous variety of violin sheet music is available for free download fromrepparttar 116046 Internet. Violin players of any skill level should be able to locaterepparttar 116047 sheet music they want online, and in some cases, even for free. Sheet music can be free to share online if two qualifications are met. First, it must be seventy years or more sincerepparttar 116048 piece was composed; after this amount of time, creative works enterrepparttar 116049 public domain. Specific editions of a work can still be protected by copyright, however, as editors and arrangers maintain their own copyrights over versions they have created.

Cont'd on page 2 ==>
 
ImproveHomeLife.com © 2005
Terms of Use