Discovering an amazing piece of my ancestory

We are back from Europe and it was an amazing 10 day adventure.  The highlight of the trip was visiting and seeing the church where my great-grandfather on my dad's side was married.  The church was built around 1100 A.D.!!  We were very lucky because the church is still active and was even unlocked.  I was hoping that I could get some impressions so I took cold clay mold with me and I was successful! 

The mold on the left, which looks like a chevron is from the oldest part of the church.  The mold on the lower right is from the wall behind where my great-grandparents stood to be married.  The top mold was from a very interesting structure within the church.

I'm going to take the lower right mold and make a piece for my mom, sister, & I from silver, copper, or bronze clay and my hope is that the piece will become an heirloom.

An Amazing Adventure!

Leaving tomorrow for a 10 day trip to England with my Dad, mom & hubby.  Dad, at the young age of 84, decided he wanted to go visit the place where his grandfather came from which is North Hampton, England.  Mom decided that if we are going that far we should spend a little time and see some of London, France & Ireland so we'll be including a one day trip to Paris and an overnight to Dublin.  I am so grateful that my parents decided to take Jim & I along because I would have been VERY worried about them traveling that far at their age.  (Unfortunately my baby sis can't join us since she couldn't get off work :-(...) In addition to enjoying the trip & time with them, I am VERY excited about how this trip will inspire my future art pieces.  I am taking along a product that will allow me to create - on the spot - a mold of anything interesting I see.  Stay tuned to see what pieces will come as a result to an amazing adventure!

I love PMC Clay!!

For those of you who do not know what PMC clay is, it stands for Precious Metal Clay and when fired in a Kiln the piece comes out either 92.5 sterling silver or .999FS Fine Silver.  This clay was created years ago by Mitsubishi and it is silver with organic material added to give it somewhat of a clay property.  It is literally a lump of clay that can be formed, shaped, carved etc and fired in a Kiln.  I love the fact that when I create something like the below, it is 100% my work.

The far left is the blob of PMC clay.  The middle picture is my sketching.  I then use card stock and draw the shape & idea and use that as my template to carve out the clay.  Originally I had planned to inlay some CZ's but then remembered I had an amazing Opal that would be perfect.

The below is the fired piece.  The picture doesn't really show the beautiful blue patina that picks up the colors from the inlaid Opal.  Now it's time to make this pendant into a complete necklace.  I'll get a better picture when it is complete.

Finished this ring yesterday.  I think it looks kind of "gothic".  The stone is Chinese Turquoise.  But now I have a craving to do something really different, abstract, etc using multiple mediums of metals & polymer clay.  Got my sketch book out last night and now I can't wait to make the sketches a reality.