Copper Embossing - craft class

A short walk from my house is an old wholesale market.  It has been regenerated and boasts a pub, a brewery and tap room, cafe, Vietnamese cooking school, artisan chocolate maker, a shop full of hand-made goods (where I did the lampwork class) and a coffee roaster, among other things.  It's a lovely area and a great destination as they've been hosting a lot of events.  I've been to night markets and outdoor cinema there recently.  Anyway, there is also a craft shop.  It's called Curious? and although I've seen it, this was my first class there.

The tutor was Dawn Feeney who I have seen around at craft fairs and admired her work.  We were doing copper embossing.  

We were given a mouse mat, a selection of tools and a small piece of copper to practice on.  Dawn did a demonstration and showed us what kind of textures can be created using the various tools.  We got to work experimenting.

Then we had a go with the colours.  These are faux enamel paints - Pebeo Fantasy Moon and Pebeo Prism.  I have had a go with these before when I did a mixed media class at the Bead Shop, and I have some at home.  

The paints sit nicely in the little wells made by embossing from the back using a metal stylus and then flattening down the front with a wooden tool.  This was just a trial piece, so I tried a few colours out and experimented with running the colours together or layer blobs of one colour over the other.

Then we got to work on our main piece, which was a copper blank about 20cm square.  I'd sketched out an idea.  Being crap at drawing, I had to stick to patterns!  I started with a heart (I drew round a paper template for that) and filled it with boxes to put paint into.

Some radiating lines to section off the background, and I experimented with different patterns.  The line based patterns are embossed from the back and debossed, by embossing on the front.  I love the texture this creates, with three different depths.

For the circles, I embossed from the back, and then went round them from the front to make the stand out more.

Time for the colour!  I wanted to use teal/turquoise/blue/green as these are my favourite colours.  I added in a bit of pink for contrast.  Originally I only painted the one section in the heart pink, but then felt it was a bit unbalanced, so added pink in some of the circles too.

I took some close up shots, but I didn't think to take a picture of the finished object framed.  In a lovely touch, we each got an IKEA box frame to take away!  Dawn lightly mounted my picture with masking tape, but as the paint was still wet, I have to re-mount it more securely before I hang it.

You can make out the different textures of the paint in some of these pictures.  The Fantasy Moon looks like the surface of the moon with tiny craters, and the Prism is more abstract - the pink paint is Prism.

I thoroughly enjoyed this class.  Great venue with coffee and cake provided, and Dawn was a good teacher (much better than my last craft class experience!).  I'd love to take another class with her, but alas, there's not really much more to learn!  It's more a case of practice and experimenting.  You can also cut out the images and shape them, but that's something to try at home.  She did say she could do a class at her home using heat to create colour effects (there's a great example here on her home page, scroll down).  We weren't allowed to do that at the venue due to health and safety restrictions!

I can see me doing more of this, it was relaxing and enjoyable.  I just need to get some more work done on the house (studio nearly done!) and finish off summer really.  There are too many festivals/gigs/events to go to during the summer for me to get much craft done!

mixed media workshop

I had last Thursday off work.  Wednesday had been a nightmare with crisis after crisis at work so I was glad to be off.  Shame it's just a distant memory now...  I had the day off work to go to the second in the set of 4 jewellery workshops I've booked onto with my wonderful mum at The Bead Shop in Nottingham.  This one was mixed media.

To be honest, we had no idea what that meant!  It actually meant 4 different jewellery making techniques. 

The first was using the brand new Pebeo Fantasy Paints.  They're a lovely paint which dries into fabulous textures, not so apparent in my crappy photo below!  We used the paint on various metal elements and practiced swirling and layering to get different effects.  I have to confess I didn't make the round red one below. I made a green and gold flower that didn't end up looking like a flower and I didn't like it but mum loved it and swapped me.

The ring below uses silver and pink paints to create this fab effect.

The second tecnique used Geofix clay.  It's a clay that comes in two parts and is mixed together.  After they are mixed you have about an hour to play with it before it sets.  I made a pendant and a very bling bead which I struggled to take a photo of.

The bead is on its side in the photo below but it's still a rubbish picture.  I love the pendent. 

Next up was Stampbord.  No, I haven't spelt that wrong, that's the brand name.  It's a board covered with a clay type thing. I used inks to mix, swirl and dab colour on, then I used an etching tool to take parts back to the clay underneath.

When she showed us the samples of the beginning, I didn't think I'd like it, it didn't seem very "me".  You know what?  I fell in love with this technique.  I could have sat there all day and stampborded.  That isn't a word, I made that one up.  You can also use them as a basis for collage, I bought some of the pieces so I'll try it at home. You're probably wondering how this is jewellery.  I could stick brooch backs on, or a bail, or I could punch holes in them with my Big Bite and add eyelets.

Finally, we did shrink plastic.  I think most of you will be familiar with this.

My rainbow is definitely too small, and looks like it was drawn by a 3 year old.  Hmmm, don't think I quite took to this technique.  Can you see what I was trying to achieve?

After lunch, we could decide what we wanted to play with.  I went for stampbord straight away.

I couldn't believe that I could draw with the etcher thing, I can't draw full stop but this just flowed.  I'll hang the bottom one in the picture above from the top one with jump rings and add a brooch back.  They all need varnishing to preserve them too.

I plan to add eyelets to this one and make it into a necklace in the formation above.  This technique is also very forgiving.  Made a mistake?  You can rub it out with a special tool, taking it back to the clay, or you can paint over it!  Fab.  You can also use the Fantasy Paints on the Stampbord which my mum did to great effect.  Did I take photos?  Of course not, I was too busy etching!

Expect to see more of this...

p.s. anyone know any jewellery making blogs?  I only have about two on my reader but I'm loving it!


Don't forget to enter my Something Old, Something New competition.  The deadline is 31st July and there is a prize!