Etched Metamorphosis

I was recently thrilled to have discovered the right tweaks to get my Press n Peel sheets to work for transferring printed images to metal. I've been an etching fiend ever since! I found some fabulous digital damask collage sheets at Aesthetic Addiction on Etsy and got started creating some things with an exotic feel. The raw pieces above are based on a tube bail I had made, but miniaturized, flipped upside down, and modified for earrings. Here's the result:

Gypsy Festival

This pattern made me think of a gypsy caravan for some reason, so I had to make it colorful! I started with amber and iolite, and added some peridot. Juicy!

Another set of these had a more distinctly floral pattern, with flowers that made me think of sunflowers. I couldn't get a saffron color out of my head for them, so chose some deep golden coin pearls as the central color, and fished around in my stash for what seemed like hours trying to find the right companion color. I wired on two sets of beads in other colors, only to cut them off in dissatisfaction. I tried going a little out of my comfort zone, and I was surprised how much I liked cool iceberg blue amazonite with the coin pearls. It was really vivid, and made me think of a French country house all done up in sunny yellow and robin's egg blue:

Haystacks in Provence

It also put me in mind of many of Van Gogh's paintings, especially "Haystacks in Provence."

I was really thrilled with the color in the copper in this pair--after I etched it, I had to anneal it to make it workable, and then pickle it. That took it back to shiny pink. Before I formed the tube shape, I antiqued it in liver of sulfur to bring out the pattern, and then heated it with a hot clothes iron to bring up the cherry/orange colors. It has a really warm glow now.

This last pair sports beadcaps I've been thinking of for a long time. I had sketched them eons ago but didn't know how to fit them together--and then I discovered tube rivets! So the other day I decided to give it a try. I had some textured copper strips lying around for other uses and so I just did them up really fast. They look kind of medieval to me!

Medieval Spring

I used them with a pair of Alisha White's hollow lampwork globes in taupey-mauve, some Czech glass in olive and lime green pearls. I have some more of these hollow beads and will probably do a similar design with the rest of them--I love how lightweight they are, and yet they have such presence!

I have one more set of etched copper tabs like the ones at the top of the post (the ones at bottom left), and the pattern seems to be telling me "Purple and Red!" so keep your eyes peeled for those!

The Lady of Shalott

Or at least one of her go-to necklaces. Before she goes all moony over Lancelot and dies in a rowboat. Drama queen.

Neckwear for Tiresome Medieval Drama Queens

I bought this fossil coral pendant at a local beadshop years ago. I loved the colors and patterns, and how it was weathered and chewed up, like an eons-worn fossil in an old specimen cabinet. I've taken it out several times, intending to do something with it, but couldn't decide how to hang it. I didn't want to just string it, or just put hanging loops on it--I wanted it to have some presence. Yesterday I had a little idea, and enjoyed trying it out.

I wanted just a band of copper around the top of the pendant. I made a pattern with some cardboard from a Mary's Gone Crackers box--just cut a strip that looked like about the width I wanted, laid it across the top of the pendant where the holes were, folded it around, marked the ends against the pendant edges with a pencil, trimmed it up, and then felt for and marked the holes with a big sewing needle.

I used this to cut out my copper strip and punch the holes. (Of course, I forgot it would get bigger when I textured it with my coin and hammer, but that all worked out anyway.)

I annealed, textured, and annealed again (and there was some pickling and antiquing and polishing, etc.). It was nice and soft when I folded it around the pendant. I threaded some 18-gauge wire through the holes and created wrapped loops on either side.

I burnished down the edges with my burnisher. It reached around the back a little too (it got longer when I hammered it), so I smoothed that down with my burnisher.

It was looking kind of medieval/Renaissance-y to me, so I decided to stay with that. I found two matching (hey! cool!) textured rings in my stash, and created some textured bars with hammered ball ends. (I am loving liver of sulfur gel so much, by the way, I would almost marry it, but it's not legal in my state to marry a bottle of toxic gel.) I added a couple little rhodonite rounds, and finished it off with lots of chain.

It's about 28.5" long--I pictured it with a long medieval-style tunic. Like with maybe leggings and suede thigh boots. Like if Lisbeth Salander went to a Ren Faire.

Somebody should have given Ms. Shalott a bunch of beads and some string and wire and stuff. She'd have been like, "Lancelot who?"