Kitiki is an Art Clay distributor, and provides: Art Clay silver, gold, and cork clays; Accent Gold for silver; Paragon kilns and accessories; Lindstrom pliers and cutters; precision metalwork and craft tools; low-voltage drills; electric tumblers; jewellery materials; and Art Clay courses, workshops, masterclasses, and teacher certification.

Alchemy is a medieval belief that non-precious metals could be turned into gold. Although personal desire and chemical optimism cannot create gold from something not-gold, the magic of the idea is still very powerful.

Suppose you want to make a silver heart for a necklace. You need silversmith's skills to cut, file, smooth, drill, and polish a piece of silver. It takes a long time, mistakes are expensive, and offcuts are hard to recycle.

Now suppose you want to make a modelling-clay heart. You need no special skills to shape, smooth, and dry a piece of clay. It doesn't take long, mistakes can be corrected, and offcuts are easy to recycle.

Now make an Art Clay heart. Fire it in a kiln, on your kitchen gas hob, on a camping gaz ring, or with a butane torch, and it turns into a shining solid silver heart. The alchemy magic is that it's real metal: it doesn't just look like metal.

Art Clay, sometimes called silver clay, gold clay, metal clay, or precious-metal clay, is made by Aida Chemical Industries in Japan: it's a composite clay-like material, made of fine silver or gold powder and a harmless water-based organic binder.

Straight from the packet, it looks and feels like plasticene: so you can shape it easily, using familiar modelling tools and similar techniques. Its flexibility makes it a versatile material, ideal for home and business jewellers, metalsmiths, craftworkers, modelmakers, glass studios, potteries, and art colleges.

Generally, there are just three easy steps needed to successfully make unique necklaces, bracelets, charms, keepsakes, earrings, rings, brooches, anklets, ornaments, and seasonal decorations.

Whilst shaping the clay, you can press or cut patterns into the surface, trim parts away, or add more using the clay, paste, syringe, and paper types. And it can be combined with silver findings and materials such as copper, beads, dichroic glass, pearls, semiprecious gems, porcelain, and polymer clay.

When the shape is more or less as you want it to be, it's ready to be dried. You can use a kiln, your kitchen oven, a hairdrier, or a central heating radiator.

After drying, it looks and feels like plaster, so it's still easy to reshape, file, and drill, or add a pattern or texture. You can even add more clay, drying it again before firing.

It's very important to refine the shape as carefully as you can at this stage, before firing, whilst it's still easy to work with.

When you've refined the shape, and it's completely dry, it's ready to be fired. You can use a kiln, your kitchen gas hob, a camping gaz ring, or a butane torch.

As it's fired, the organic binder vapourises and the metal powder sinters, leaving solid 999 silver or 22 carat gold. During firing, small amounts of non-toxic carbon dioxide and water vapour are released: so it's safe to use at home.
There's an important difference between sintering and fusing. During sintering, metal powders bond to produce solid metal, but don't melt. During fusing, metals melt and lose their shape.

You can include sterling silver findings or wire, but it's better to do a test first before firing your piece just in case the other metals in the sterling silver alloy react adversely.

You can include cubic zirconium stones and other gems, but it's better to do a test first before firing your piece just in case the stone cracks, discolours, or deforms.

After firing, it's metal. So you can drill it, file it, polish it, burnish it, tumble it, hammer it, tarnish it, and solder it. Or it can be re-worked, added to, textured, or polished.

Art Clay is 99.9% pure silver, often called 999 silver or fine silver. Generally, it's not going to cause an allergic reaction.

Sterling silver, common in retail jewellery, is an alloy containing silver and other metals: copper in particular. It's the electro-chemical effect caused by acidic skin moisture and dissimilar metals that gives some people an allergic reaction.

Art Clay, sometimes called silver clay, gold clay, metal clay, or precious-metal clay, is made by Aida Chemical Industries in Japan. Aida doesn't sell Art Clay directly: it uses distributors.

A distributor makes a high-volume commitment to Aida, and has to submit work for approval following successful Level 1 and Level 2 certification. The contract with Aida is to supply Art Clay within an agreed geographical area. For example: The Kitiki Studio, working with SilverClay, is a UK distributor.

Generally, distributors can't sell to organisations or individuals in other countries. However, if your country is poorly represented or your local distributor is commercially invisible, mail or call.

Distributors buy from Aida at the same price, although exchange rates, import duties, national taxes, and shipping charges vary. They sometimes choose to sell directly, but are still responsible for creating, expanding, and supporting a market. This means encouraging, and co-operating with, resellers with integrity and commitment, rather than trying to capture the whole market.

Some products are represented by an umbrella organisation, such as a non-profit making Guild or Co-operative, whose remit is to benefit all its members, equally, not try to position itself as the prime reseller.

If you buy Art Clay from a distributor, and resell it, the customer is yours: not the distributor's. The Kitiki Studio does not contact your customers, unless you specifically ask us to help them.

Distributors usually offer a series of discounts, typically for: a multi-pack retail order, students on the day of a course, educational or disability organisations, Level 1 certified, Level 2 certified, and a high-volume reseller order.

High-volume reseller discounted prices are set to encourage reselling, usually around 35% to 40%, and help resellers build their own businesses. It's unethical for distributors to undercut resellers, impose high volume quotas, or contact the reseller's customers.

Distributors usually set retail prices which allow them to create a series of discount prices which everyone finds fair and rewarding. Aida expects them to be well-informed, and have a good range of Art Clay products ready to despatch.

Some on-line shops advertise prices, then add VAT and delivery charges at the end of the order form. Others will add postage for small orders or heavy low-value orders. The Kitiki Studio includes VAT and delivery in the listed retail prices.

Remember, packets of Art Clay are not heavy, so the postage costs are small. However, most distributors and resellers prefer to use a slightly more expensive signed-for service as this covers any possible damage or loss in transit.

Also, kiln resellers may add delivery charges. A Paragon SC2 kiln costs about £12.60 to deliver to a UK mainland UK address: not £60.00 as some charge. The Kitiki Studio includes VAT and delivery in the listed retail prices.

Finally, the internet has changed the way we shop. Payment by debit or credit card is preferred, cheques take at least seven days to clear, bank transfers often arrive with deducted charges, and 30-day invoices are increasingly unpopular.