Miki’s Mom, Betty, and I took a Metal working class at Arrowmont over the weekend. It was really terrific. Barbara Joiner taught the class. We learned how to make etched brass plates. How to take those plates and press the designs into copper and silver. We took several pieces and cut them up and made bracelets and rivited them together to make beads. As per usual Betty and I were very ambitious we made 14 plates total. There were two techniques that we used the first was to take a fine point paint pen and draw your designs onto the plates. The second was to copy designs onto PnP paper and then melt the toner from the copies onto the brass. The etching solution did the hard part. Remembering to rinse every half hour was interesting. The plates had to soak for three hours. We pressed all the plates at least once into copper. There were a couple of plates we liked really well and we pressed those designs into silver. I made one plate that has two really small Meridian shields on them. I got some really good presses into copper and silver of those to make earrings out of.
metal-etching-class There are more pictures over on my Picasa album. Now I just have to find time to saw everything apart and file it all and then drill holes add rivets or jump rings and finishings. …. yeah with all my spare time and with my free hand… Must sleep now. Thud.zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.[
[...] for this I decided to make myself a circlet with nifty designs on it. I’ve taken a metal etching class … and I thought cool this would be a great chance to try out a new [...]