Experiment: Hadar's Quick Fire Clay - Rose Bronze on a Lampwork Bead

 Ha - I told you I would try the bronze as well. 

This is a metal clay product. In case you are completely new to jewelry, or have been living under a rock for a decade or so, you can buy clays that are largely metal. When you fire them, the binder clay burns off and they "sinter" and become all metal pieces. It's very, very cool. There has been lots happening in the last couple of years with non-precious metal clays being made - that can actually be afforded by mere mortals. The sky-rocketing price of silver has forced the price of the silver clays into the stratosphere, and that they are distributed by the manufacturer in a manner that is much more like multi-level marketing than it is like regular wholesale/retail process hasn't really helped either.

Anyway - I thought I would try some of this on a bead. As I did in my previous experiment - I made a core bead, rolled it in the powder, and applied heat. This one was not quite as difficult to get the bronze to stick as the copper. But the end result - well - it puts the ugh in ugly.

 For my next attempt, I did the same, base bead white, roll in powder, but I encased this one. Some cool hints of red in there! This one did not crack either.

 With the first experiment, I encased the bead and it cracked all to pieces - but just the encasing. This is the copper powder again, but not encased. When it was hot, I could see some hints of green (on the right, below the mandrel) - and while the bead did not break - lordy - it ain't purdy.

So - I tried it - meh. Not getting anything I think is worth pursuing. I can get nicer results using pieces of copper metal.