Honeys I'm home!

Just come back from the Art Clay Silver Conference at York University. Now, I don't know about you but my college never looked like this, nor did I have a fab en suite room, amazing food and a campus where a map and bicycle were necessary to get around.

However, lots of drinking and laughs with mates in the Student Union bar was more familiar and lots of learning too!

Highlights for me included carving into cuttle fish for texturing metal clay, fantastic possibilities there which I shall definitely explore further. Not so taken with the copper plating, didn't see the point frankly but good to know the technique. 'Fraid the Glas Clay is also one that I can tick off the list, for now at least.

The domed resin day was amazing.

Riota and Dice from Aida took us through the process of creating the bezel using syringe clay, not something I'm usually comfortable with. The pieces were then fired and polished. We used a moulding compound called Oyumaru which is heated, twisted and pressed into the bezels to create a dome. The colour was created with UV paints mixed with resin which was cured under a UV lamp.

There should be more info on this new technique on http://www.artclayguild.co.uk/ along with other info from the conference. The committee did a brilliant job organising the event, congrats to them all.

I want to go back to college. Is there such a thing as a BA in metal clay?, I'd have a BA.MC (hons)