Tuesday Jewelry Camp

Today was a busy day at camp! First thing this morning, we used a material called Celluclay (a versatile paper mache pulp that is mixed with water to create a clay-like consistency) to create bangle bracelets. After mixing the clay, we rolled it into long coils and molded it around soda cans to the desired thickness and shape... We left them out to dry for a few days...

Next I taught the girls how to make beads using oven-baking Sculpey polymer clay. Sculpey is so much fun to use and I have made many, many creations with it before! To create beads, I taught the girls how to make "canes"- long logs of clay with designs on the inside- and how to slice them and attach them to the body of the beads. They were REALLY into this material and made tons of cool pieces with it.

Here, some beads are drying on toothpicks after they were brushed with a glossy topcoat:

Lastly, this afternoon campers designed warm glass pendants. The girls chose their base glass color and I cut the shape they wanted for them. Then, they created designs on the pieces using glass shapes/stringers and powdered glass frit, added a loop of high-temperature wire and the kiln did the rest of the work overnight! (Learn more about warm glass fusing in my previous post about 8th grade) Here are the pieces in the kiln, and the fused pendants post firing: