I've spent the last two weeks undergoing furious bouts of trial and error mixed with a healthy dose of despair, but finally came up with a method that worked to my satisfaction:
So, I got super-excited when I first saw this idea and determinedly marched off to have a go myself (perhaps a little naively!). With the cost of silver clay so high, I was very aware that practising and making example pieces to show on Etsy would have to come out of my own pocket, since these pieces are so personalised, which led to my first amazing discovery:
Namely, the fantastic area of London that is Hatton Garden. Yes, yes, I know, it's a mecca for jewellery, but I thought that was only expensive high-end shops. It turns out that a lot of the major online UK sellers of silver clay have stores in or near Hatton Garden, which, given that it's a fifteen minute walk from my flat, sent me into paroxysms of delight :D Rashbel's were having a 10% off in-store sale which meant I could get clay at £1.80 per gram, by far the cheapest since the recent price hike, without having to pay their huge shipping costs (also, btw, the guy in the shop? Had the most massive biceps and amazing tats I've ever seen!) Cooksons also have a trade counter in Hatton Garden, where you can pick up your online orders for free just a couple of hours after you place the order. I'll definitely be ordering from them again in the future!
I must have tried about a million different types of silicon putty, trying to find the best combination for the mould. Actually, I used about £20 worth of the stuff just perfecting my technique so that I could give clear instructions to customers. Eventually, I setttled on siligum (which, if you're interested, you can get from Paperchase on Tottenham Court Road at a student discount, provided you're a student of course!) and some purple stuff to make the reverse which I got from www.pmcshop.co.uk. The latter also came with a nifty set of mini pots which has been really useful for sending out the putty to customers.
But that was only the first step! Once I had the mould, how best to imprint it? I ended up using Slik as mould release (olive oil just wasn't cutting it for the fine detail and was cracking the clay something fierce) and practising with each mould in polymer clay first to see where the detail was least obvious. I could then make sure that those parts of the mould were impressed more firmly into the metal clay. But let me tell you, that juggling polymer clay and metal clay and going back and forth between them without drying out the metal clay is a skill all in itself!
I then hit another snag with adding the patina. Just dumping it in the Liver of Sulphur solution and then polishing as normal ended up with an uneven patina. So again, trial and error. I found that gradually polishing up the print with middling polishing papers, followed by higher grits and then swapping back out worked best. Really slow, careful work. (But at least, you can stick the sucker under a torch and have another go pretty easily!)
The finished result? See for yourself:
PS. Also discovered a great little site called FotoFuze which turns white or black backgrounds into professional looking white or black backgrounds!
And the reward? Three sales in under a week :) I might manage to buy a UV lamp and have a go at photopolymer plates at this rate!
