well. an interesting day was had by all today. the latest of my antics in the studio consist of: breaking things, fixing things, breaking same things, and more, having a headache, shouting at the inanimate kiln for melting everything.
i have made a beautiful leaf on a copper choker sort of an arrangement, which was very lovely, but broken from start to finish. having said that--the choker was ok! note to self: dn't over-fire pmc leaf. other note to self: do not then fire bail whilst undried. final note to self: do not then allow toddler to hang off said badly-fired bail. bugger.
i am now extraondinatily distrustful of my kiln, and have been torch-firing things today--which is probably not better, but hey! i tried torching some copper paste leaves i'd done ages ago, partially because i was bored of them hanging around, and partiallyto see if i could. they might actually have worked, only they were far toothin, i think next time i need to put AT LEAST twice the paste on. although i had to scrap all of my copper the other day because it had just gone completely weird. having said that, my copper and silver torchfired ring has worked quite well, although i'm not 100%sure it's sintered properly. (but it looks fantastic-i think!)