Buying a kiln recently has given me the chance to experiment with enamelling on larger pieces of copper and to produce some really cool effects. These effects happen when you combine different types of enamel. I usually use smaller flat pieces of copper for making enamelled earrings and have had some of these effects happen when firing with a torch but they are much more obvious when you use larger pieces. I made a few practice pieces which you can see in the photos below. This was flux {a transparent enamel not to be confused with soldering flux!} applied straight onto copper and fired until the copper was a bright golden colour. Then I added a layer of liquid enamel in green and red over the flux and fired again. The lines and spots form when the enamel becomes hot enough to start moving and in this case the transparent pushes through the liquid enamel layer forming these cool lines and spots. The effect is better in the green liquid enamel than the red. N...
If you're like me and you love adding pattern and texture to your metal jewellery you've no doubt come up against the problem of forming a piece of metal with a pattern on it. In my case most of my forming involves using a dapping block or steel stakes. If you hit a piece of textured/patterned metal with a metal tool like a hammer or dapping punch the pattern will become flattened and spoilt. My previous method of stopping this from happening when I wanted to dome a patterned piece of metal would be to use leather to protect the pattern as in this photo... As you can see the leather soon ends up looking a bit battered. It does work but one day when I was flitting about in internetland I came across a nylon doming block and it became a thing I needed to have . So after searching for quite a long time I discovered you can't get them in the UK. Hmm, no surprise there. I did manage to find one on Amazon from a US seller and for under £5 with postage also under £5 ...