Art Clay water-based gold clay, sometimes called metal clay or precious metal clay, is made by Aida Chemical Industries in Japan: it's a composite clay-like material, made of 95% 22K gold and 5% water-based binder. As gold clay is fired, the binder is burnt off and the metal powder sinters, leaving pure 24 kt gold - not a plating or something looking like gold. It gives you a beautiful, soft yellow gold. This soft clay is very easy to use in lump form or can be turned into paste by adding a little water.
This gold can be hallmarked as 22 karat gold, once fired it is 91.7% gold and 8.3% silver.
To save gold, you can shape the gold clay around a form or cork clay to create a hollow shapes - a hollow gold cabochon shape is very effective set with a silver clay bezel.
You can also turn it into paste and decorate your silver clay - simply paint a layer of silver paste on the unfired silver item, follow by several thin coats of the gold paste. Leave to dry and fire at a high temperature with a torch for about 7 minutes.
Art Clay gold products come from 100% recycled gold which has been extracted from scraps of industrial use (ie. electric parts, plating), jewellery and dentistry. It is not sourced from conflict mines.
Aida Chemical Industries Co. Ltd is recognised as Conflict-free Smelters which conforms to international guidelines set by CFSI (Conflict Free Sourcing Initiative).
So far all I've used it for was a tiny gold bar which used very little of the clay as I wanted to try something very small as I'd not used gold clay before. I followed the instructions in the packet to the letter and it came out great. I then fused the gold to a fine silver ring and popped it into my tumbler - it is gorgeous! Now I can't wait to try a few more things - I will probably only use it to make tiny charms to add to silver clay pieces but so far so good!
