I have to admit I was probably more chicken about making my first PMC project than I was learning to solder. I have little experience with clay, and since it isn’t exactly cheap, I didn’t want to make any mistakes. However, after flipping through Tim McCreight’s book Working with Precious Metal Clay, I found this project on how to make a leaf bead. It looked so easy that my confidence was restored, and I thought this would be a good way to get started.

To make a leaf bead, you’ll need:

a small ball of PMC (This depends on the size of your leaf.)
a leaf (I used one from a pepper plant.)
a clean surface to work on
8 playing cards
a small rolling pin (I use a piece of pvc pipe.)
olive oil
Exacto ® knife
2 inch piece of plastic straw
kiln
vermiculite
jeweler’s file or emery board

1. Start by placing a small ball of PMC in the middle of your work surface.

2. Set two stacks of card with 4 cards each on either side of your clay.

3. Add a little dab of oil to your roller.

4. Then roll out the clay. The cards will help you roll the clay to the proper thickness.

5. Now place your leaf over the clay, and again roll. This will impress the image of your leaf into the clay.

6. Remove the leaf from the clay.

7. Use your knife to cut the extra clay around the leaf image.

8. Continue to cut around the leave until you have the complete image of your leaf.

9. Pick up the clay leaf, and wrap it around your straw.

10. To ensure that one side of the leaf bead isn’t flat, you’ll want to set the straw either up right in a bowl of vermiculite so that the clay is able to dry, or you can position the straw over a small jar. There are a lot of ways to dry the clay. You just want to make sure that the clay isn’t sitting flat on a surface.

11. Once the clay is dry (time will depend on the humidity around you), fire it in a kiln. For fine silver clay, this would mean to fire it at 1650 degrees F or 900 degrees C for two hours. During the firing process, though the clay is not toxic, be careful of the fumes from the plastic straw that will burn out. These are toxic! Do not breath in these toxic fumes!

12. Once the bead is fired, it will look white, as if it has been pickled.

13. You may need to file a little on your piece. I didn’t have to, but I’ve seen some silver clay pieces that require a little file touch up. Supposedly you can use an emery board or fine sand paper. If you have jeweler’s files, you could use these as well.

14. The final step is to polish your bead. I used my magnetic polisher. You could also use your flexible shaft with some attachments or a polishing wheel. You’ll see that it will come out a beautiful, bright silver!

For making this leaf bead, I followed the instructions in Tim McCreight’s Working with Precious Metal Clay, and I did not vary from them. I’m pretty happy with the way the bead turned out. I might try this again and make it a little thicker though by using 3 cards on each side when rolling out the clay. If you decide to try this project, please be extra careful about the fumes from the kiln. You could also use food items like bread instead of the plastic. Organic items will burn out in the kiln, and they won’t make you sick.

All graphics created by Tammy Powley.