Kalaya Steede

I've been working on a few things for you but first things first.  Aren't you wondering how Fire Spirit turned out? Below is the enameling process. I sifted with a 100 mesh sifter. All enamels are  Thompson Enamels  and firing was done in Wall-E, kiln's name, at 1500 degrees F for about 1 minute and 15 seconds. All kiln's are different. Wall-E likes to get things done fast and furious. I'm only going to enamel the top piece. The bottom piece will be left alone to allow fire scale to form at will. I removed excess enamel from the bottom piece after each sift with a paint brush. 1. Sifted 1996-Black and 1850-Pumpkin. Fire. Rinse 2. Sifted 1870-Orient Red. Fired once more and thought to myself...why are you doing it this way?  I should of been layering the enamels. Ohhhh how I forgets how to do things.  Rinse. 3. Sifted some 1820-yellow, 1870-Orient Red on top of that. Then I removed some of the enamel here and there with a paint brush, letting the F...

Your mission Ms. Steede, should you decide to accept it is to make a pendant that captures the Fire Spirit.  At least that is what I thought when I was commissioned to do this piece.  At first it was going to be a single piece that would be enameled reddish orange for the flame effect but I wasn't feeling it. I didn't like that it was so flat. I like  depth, texture, and movement. So I spoke with my partner in crime and we came up with this...  There will be two pieces cut and then soldered together and domed to give it depth. What about the bail? Isn't that always the question? Ran the design past Kim and got the green light, so let the cutting begin! Lots of pictures of the process, here we go... 1. Two pieces sawed out prior to soldering together (note the piercing) 2. Used white out to prevent the solder from running out from under the inner piece. Eww...how ugly! Time to clean it up. Now to attach the bail to the back. 3. What the...Oops I pl...