Cinnamon Jewellery

I've had an idea floating around in my head this last week or so to make some enamel earrings using liquid enamel over a black base with an abstract and simple {very!} scratched design.  My previously mixed liquid enamel colours had sat on the shelf for a few months since I last used them and had dried up so I needed to add some distilled water to them and stir like a mad thing to get them mixed and smooth again before I could start. I decided to create a couple of new colours from two existing liquid enamel shades so added some more yellow and green to a boring green colour I had to produce the bright green shade in the middle. I also added more blue and green to another mix to produce the greeny-blue shade on the right. That's the great thing with liquid enamels - you can mix them and create new colours. To begin I enamelled some copper shapes on both sides with an opaque black then applied a layer of liquid enamel. On my first attempt the liquid enamel...

 Something that's been on my to-do list for a while now is trying liquid enamel. I had a few weeks "break" over Christmas {not really a break as I was making new stuff!} so at long last I got round to ordering some of the liquid enamel powders. I got a few basic colours and a white so I could mix different shades. I also bought a white crackle base powder to experiment with. I mixed up the colours with distilled water in totally unsuitable containers - too tall and thin and I've since bought some wider pots - and started painting. I applied the liquid enamels to a base of cream opaque and on two of the pieces I fired a layer of white crackle base before applying the liquid enamel. Lumps in the enamel means I didn't mix properly! Once I'd finished painting I set the copper pieces onto a warmed soldering block to speed up drying. When they were dry I started scratching designs {I use that word in the loosest possible context} into the drie...

I've been concentrating on bezel setting and soldering a lot recently so have been working mainly with metals of the silver and copper hue. So a bit like when your body tells you you need chocolate (all the time in my case) I got out the enamels recently to feed my craving for colour. Enamels used to scare me when I first started using them and I was ultra careful about not contaminating them so as not to discover those little black specks and tiny pieces of wire wool that you never see until after you've fired something. I'm still careful but maybe a bit more relaxed these days. I recently had a problem with some transparent enamel I'd washed several months ago. I used it over opaque and it cracked. Not straight away because enamel likes to lull you into a false sense of security sometimes. No, one piece cracked a few hours after it was fired and the other a couple of days after. I reckoned it was because the washed enamel had been hanging around for a while and...