Making Hollow Beads Out of Precious Metal Clay PMC

Making hollow beads out of Precious Metal Clay is a good way to keep your pieces lighter weight, and use less PMC per piece. That means that the jewelry you end up with would be less expensive to the end user. It also allows you to make much bigger pieces that won't weigh the customer down when they are wearing your piece.

In order for the hollow beads to keep their shape, you need to make a placeholder for the center of the bead.

A good material to use to make the placeholder is cork clay. Here are the steps:

Making the mold or placeholder out of the cork clay.

Cork clay comes in a plastic wrapped package and is damp. It can only be formed when it is wet, so you definitely want to make sure that you keep the package tightly sealed. Once it is dry, you can no longer work with it.

Take a piece of the cork clay and mold it into the shape for the inside of your bead. You can make as many of these as you like.

Decide where you would like the hole to cut through the bead.

When you have decided where you would like the hole to be, take a wooden toothpick or similar item, and push it through the cork clay. Leave the toothpick in the the cork clay. There should be ends of the toothpick sticking out on both sides. When you fire the bead, both the cork clay and the toothpick will burn up in the kiln.

Let the cork clay dry overnight. Do not put PMC over the cork clay while it is still wet.

Now you have your mold or placeholder.

Making the bead.

Now that you have the placeholder, you can form the bead around it.

Use olive oil to moisten your hands and work surface. Just use a few small drops of oil. The work surface should not be slick.

Use your plastic roller to roll out your PMC to 3 or 4 cards thick.

Remember that you do not want to waste any of your Precious Metal Clay, so put any excess back into the ziplock bag.

You can either cut out the shape beforehand or form the clay around the cork clay and cut the shape as you go.

It is best to have a slight overlap where the two edges join together and seal the overlap with paste or slip.

If you want to press a design into the PMC, do it before you form it around the cork clay. If you want to etch a design into the PMC, wait until you have formed it around the cork clay, then do your etching.

Next add any embellishments that you want around your bead. You can add PMC paper cut outs, additional pieces of rolled out PMC, or filigree with the syringe.

Make sure that the bead dries thoroughly.

After the bead is dry, green finish it with an emery board or light sandpaper. You may need to fill in any holes or cracks with slip. Let it dry again, and repeat the process until you are satisfied with your work.

Fire your bead in your kiln at the proper temperature. The cork clay and toothpick will burn away.

To clean your bead after firing, you can use a wire brush and polishing cloths to do it by hand, or a tumbler. Each gives you a different finish.

Learn more about this author, Paula Atwell.