Skip to main content

Add Some Colourful Enamel Discs To Your Jewellery!



Here's the first batch of enamelled discs I made a couple of days ago that are slowly being listed on Etsy. Doing 36 at once was fun - I normally do about 4 - 6 at a time when I make enamelled stuff for jewellery but once the counter enamelling was done the best part of adding the colour went well and was quite relaxing to be honest, very therapeutic! Here's a few photos of some of the discs.......




Having made the very important decision as to which colours to go for ( I have quite a few!) I had to decide on size and quantity. I went for packs of 6 small 11mm discs with one hanging hole and packs of 4 discs slightly bigger at 13mm with two holes for now. The 6 disc packs feature 3 colours from the same colour group and the 4 packs 2 colours. The colours aren't set in stone and can be mixed. 




The backs of the discs are counter enamelled in black which stabilizes the enamel and copper and prevents cracking and each disc is enamelled with two layers of opaque enamel on the front. I was glad to find I hadn't thrown away a pretty lavender shade I had in a Soyer enamel. It's a great colour but has a high firing temp which doesn't make it a good idea for torch enamelling but it works ok for simple discs.




I dug out a yellow I had too but seldom use but I think it goes well with the orange and red.




Shades of blue - robins' egg, seafoam (one of my favourite shades) and aqua. I think I have to say that the greens are my favourite - the pea, mint and lichen look so nice together.


That Feeling You're Being Watched.............
Ever get that feeling? I was totally engrossed in the very important things we online sellers have to do on our computers, humming along to the Arctic Monkeys on Xfm when I felt I was being watched and turned round to this......



This is Tuppence. Known as Tuppers, she sits on my work table (previously known as the dining room table) usually on top of anything that gets in her way and just stares at the back of my head using her strange cat powers to make me turn round and give her food. She's like a silent watcher, always there when I turn round and I'm sure her main reason for being is so she can appear out of nowhere to leap onto my knee everytime I sit down in the front room.


She is very much a lady, despises my other two (male) cats and I'm pleased to say she understands what the word "no" means unlike my other two male cats.....

Labels:

Comments

  1. littlecherryhillFriday, August 30, 2013

    Tuppers is so pretty! Ugh I wish I could enamel like that, every try I take ends up worse than the one before :(

    ReplyDelete
  2. Buy Neelam StoneThursday, September 05, 2013

    So beautiful I love your post.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Your comments and questions are very welcome!
If you would prefer to contact me directly please use the contact form on my "get in touch" page.
Any comments containing links will be deleted so please don't waste your time.....

Popular posts from this blog

My Jewellery Shed Gets A Lick Of Paint

At the end of last summer, after an incredibly busy few months jewellery-wise, I decided to take a break and repaint my shed. I'd painted it a pale green colour when I first got it and it was starting to look a bit faded and sad. So I did what I expect most people do and started looking online at what wonderful colour I could repaint it. There are lots of great colours out there by Cuprinol and Ronseal and the DIY stores own brands. I took a long time deciding on a colour then got in the car to go and buy the paint. That's when I discovered that B&Q and Homebase only carry a limited selection of shed paint colours {8 if you're lucky} and if you then find something in stock you do like they quite often don't have it in the size pot you need! So the colour I bought was a bit of "Oh buggar it, that'll have to do". Luckily it turned out to be similar to what I'd originally wanted by the time I'd finished the third coat - yes it took three coat...
5 comments
Read more

Etching Copper With Ferric Chloride

 I decided recently that etching is one of my favourite things to do with metal. I read about it online quite a while ago and immediately thought it looked cool but the thought of using an "acid" and having to find somewhere to store it (a perennial problem when you don't have a workroom) put me off. So instead I admired etched copper from afar. Until I got a bee in my bonnet about it again and bought Lexi Erikson's copper etching dvd. Lexi Erikson is very good at explaining jewellery techniques and making them seem much more straightforward than they first appear. I already knew that ferric chloride was a salt and not an acid so wouldn't eat my flesh through to the bone if I accidently spilled some on my hand. The dvd made me feel much more comfortable about having a go so I ordered some ferric chloride from ebay and bought some stamps and StazOn ink from a local craft shop. My first attempt went ok but for some reason I left the copper to etch for an hou...
11 comments
Read more

Amazing Enamel Effects

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...
31 comments
Read more