Adventures in Prismacolor and Copper

Everything happened this month! My Subaru died an untimely but very spectacular death, I caught the (NOT swine) flu, I had unexpected administrative work to do at my university, and I was teaching overloads. Until this Monday I hadn't turned on my torch since the last time I updated!

I did try to fit some interesting things into the cracks and corners of time, and one of them was playing with Prismacolour markers on copper metal. The pieces aren't finished, but here's the fun I have been having. These pictures are from different projects that I have going all at once, not from one project start-to-finish.

I started with raw copper, either annealed, as in the first picture, or plain. Then I roughed up the surface with 220, 180, and 60-grit sandpaper to make the patina stick. The rougher the surface, the better. Afterwards, I pickled the annealed copper to remove firescale, and then thoroughly washed the copper pieces. Oil from your hands on the copper will prevent the patina from adhering to the metal. It needs to be fairly well bonded to the metal, unless you want copper showing through on your design.

Once your piece is clean, you can patina it. There are lots of formulae on the web that work faster or slower, so pick your poison and be *careful* handling it! My first time I used a commercial patinaing formula that I picked up at Binder's art supply. You can get a similar formula from JAX chemicals. I laid some of it on too thickly and didn't make my copper rough enough in others, so when I worked with the patinaed piece I had to be careful and use a very light touch--and incorporate the places where the bare copper showed through as part of my design. The next time I used the slower method of salt and ammonia, which produced a more durable finish. Some people on the net have suggested urine, which does have ammonia in it. While it may have been an acceptable laundry bleach substitute in Ancient Rome, and Lindsey Davis describes her character, Marcus Didius Falco, giving his landlady (the laundress Lenia) the ... umm ... results of his day's intake of fluids, I really don't want to use pee on anything I make, wear, or sell. Given the sheer amount of liquid my current foster dog, Gator, produces, it would be a cheap patina ... but no. Just no. Thank you.

I also made the mistake of sanding a larger piece of copper, putting a patina on it, and then sawing or snipping out my final shapes. Bad move, because even a strongly bonded patina can be delicate at this stage. My reasoning had been to make sanding and patinaing more efficient. However, next time I will sand a larger piece, then cut, drill, and file my final shapes, and then add patina.

Anyway, next comes the fun part! You guessed it--COLOR! I bought a few Prismacolor pencils in bright cheerful neon colours, and began laying them on the patina with a very light touch. Then I swabbed each piece with a bit of turpentine and let it dry. Next came -- you guessed it -- more colour, and so on until I was happy with the result or the copper would not take any more colour. I baked the pieces for about ten minutes in my oven (I want a dedicated toaster oven!) to melt the Prismacolour wax; the turps will not catch fire at 275 degrees. Then I sprayed the pieces with a lacquer. People have recommended Krylon for its short drying time, and I see why -- the stuff I had around the house took an age to dry! It wasn't an issue because I was fitting in these steps into the "cracks" of my day, but now that I have more time it is going to be a PITA to wait. Krylon, here I come!

If I liked the colour at that stage, I stopped there. If not, I sanded each piece with 0000 grit steel wool, very lightly, and did another set of Prismacolour and turps rounds, followed by another fast bake and another spray of lacquer, and so on until I was satisfied. Once I liked the colour, or knew that the piece was as good as it was going to get, I finished up with a spray of lacquer followed by a thin layer of that wonderful magical substance, Renaissance Wax. Then, you guessed it, I baked it for 10 minutes.

Finally, I used 0000 grit steel wool to sand each piece again, and buffed and polished it. With this lot I still have drilling and assembly to do, as you can see in the final picture (above). However, the next time I go through the process I will have pre-drilled, and all I will need to do is some final forming, if needed, and assembly. I want to add small lampwork beads to these pieces!

Metal and colored pencils and chemicals, oh my! How much more fun could there be? If you try this, by the way (speaking of fun) make sure you work outside or in a well-ventilated area. Turps and Renaissance Wax have noxious vapours, and filing / sanding metal isn't particularly healthy for the respiratory system.

Beads of Courage: Butterfly Beads

Marcy Lamberson has blogged about Robert Simmons' new take on butterfly beads using white enamel and copper leaf. Robert's beads are the top picture. He's the National Director for Bead Donations for the Beads of Courage program. He also is a wonderful person and an excellent teacher--only Robert could tell a group of lampworkers about the chemical composition of etching fluid, and its dangers (this stuff can eat down to the bone!), and have all of us raring to go out and etch some more ... carefully.

Butterfly beads are given to parents whose children didn't survive their illness. The problem with many sculptural butterfly beads is that, while they are beautiful, they can also be delicate.
Unless the wings are carefully attached, they are likely to chip or snap off. It's not a problem if the parents want to display the bead, but many want to wear it and keep it close.

Robert has made an excellent tutorial on making these beads; you can see pictures at the Southern Flames website.

The second and third pictures are of both sides of my first butterfly bead. I rather pretentiously named it "From Bonds Arising," and added copper mesh to signify the prison fence of the body that the child has escaped. The bead can be wired so that it can be worn as a pendant.


If you do not want to use enamels, I have found that adding copper leaf over a dot of Opal Yellow will give a lovely green color, as seen in these beads from last year. I think if you add a dot of Opal Yellow where you want your butterfly to be that you can achieve a similar look. If you want to use fine 40 or 42 gauge copper sheeting, the butterfly will turn a lovely shade of pink if you use it over Reichenbach frits in the pink and red family, as seen in this focal (it's a dragonfly, so just imagine it as a butterfly, k?).

Robert's tutorial (and my tips) are freely offered to the lampworking community. Please consider making--and donating--some of these butterfly beads to Beads of Courage.

I'm Finally Back . .. with Chunky Discs

*whew!* It's good to be back, having some time to torch. The semester is over, the cold that laid me out flat for nearly two weeks, sleeping 20+ hours a day, has gone, and my Memorial Day guests are a very pleasant memory.

The first day back at the torch I didn't make much of anything of note; as always, I was trying to get my mojo back. I spent some time experimenting with copper inclusions, and will post about that later in the week. Yesterday I decided that the time had come to conquer my chunky disc press. I'm pretty good with presses in general, but my results were pretty hit and miss. However, I had some of my sister's (That Frit Girl) fantastic specialty blend frits to play with, and I was determined to master the press.

We went toe to toe, and at first it looked as if I was going to lose, again -- Press 3, Andrea 0. I started with plain pale turquoise, because I have a *lot* of that glass. A couple beads were too wonky (so before the bead release flaked off in the press I turned the gather into a tube for Beads of Courage), but then perseverence, or maybe that steely glint in my eye, paid off. (I think the steely glint is due to perspiration ... it gets hot in my kitchen nook!) I got three nice ones -- a little dimply, but within the bounds of "artistic" :). Then I decided to press my victory and I tried frit, using "Sedna," which I really love. The problem with using frit and a disc press, of course, is where do you dip? For once I think I need to make a deeper frit tray; all mine are shallow. Anyway, I solved the problem by carefully rolling a layer of frit into the bead, adding more pale aqua, and then adding frit--watching for that 10% rule!

I finished the session, not with disc beads, but with some flat bottomed crunches. I love the shape; they lie so nicely on a bracelet or necklace! But they are a pain to make if you want precise sizes, as I first shape them in a Cattwalk tab press and then crunch them. The advantage to that process, of course, is not just consistent sizes, but the lack of those strongly indented ends. Mind you, those ends work really well with a Swarovski crystal nestled into them, so I make those too. Anyway, these beads are made with my sister's frit blend, "My sister's socks." It makes referents a tad awkward, because I always feel I should call them "my socks." Anyway, she made the frit for me, to match the cheerfully mismatched, candy-colored cotton socks I like to wear. This is a fun blend, and I thought the fun crunch shape was a good match for it.

It's time to torch! So I will leave you with a new picture of an older set:






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Improving Your Photos: Graduated ND Filters

What nobody ever tells you when you begin to post your beads or other crafts online is that you are going to have to become a photographer and a Photoshop or GIMP guru as well as a crafter, business person, marketer, and other related occupations. (No, I don't know how to do all that gracefully; if I did, this blog would be published regularly instead of in fits and starts.)

For the most part, my photography routine works well. Crop to size. Adjust color to as close to the bead as I can using levels. Resize to 1000 px square, and run unsharp mask. But sometimes that routine just doesn't work. Since I have been procrastinating doing some work for my day job, I have been searching out GIMP tutorials to share. One of the simplest is a lovely video tutorial on creating a graduated ND filter, which enriches the colors of your photo when they are washed out.

Here is my original picture. Not bad, but not great, either. Well, let me say that this isn't really the original--I've already cropped the picture to zoom in close. Otherwise, though, I haven't done anything to the image.

Next, I went ahead and changed the colors using the Color --> Levels command. This command lets you adjust the color levels using a histogram, and lets you fiddle with the colors until they more closely approximate the colors in your original beads.
I used to use the automatic white balance eyedropper, but now I just use the slider bars in the histogram (it opens up when you click Colors -->Levels) until the colors look natural.

Only some times they don't. I've found there's lots of ways to make the colors pop, but one of the simplest is to add an ND-Filter. The tutorial creator does a good job of explaining how to do this, so I will just add my results here. However, if you have trouble following the video, let me know and I can walk you through it.

The final result:

Try it and see if it helps your photos!
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Preparations

Next weekend is the Down the Street Bead Show here in Atlanta, at the Cobb Galleria, and as usual Art of the Firebird and I are going to be there. If you're thinking of coming, stop by and say hello! (And make sure you go to the DTS website first, because they will give you $1 off the admission fee.)

What that means is that this week, in and around prepping a new class, I am assessing my inventory and filling in gaps--colors, shapes, types. I'm also moving old bead sets that haven't moved through two or three shows to the "super sale" bin.

I'm concentrating on simple beads in spring colors -- frit beads that I can put a lower price on than I can the beads with a lot of complex elements. Given the current economy, I want to have a number of affordable options. Plus the current focus on simplicity means that beads that are not fussy may do well. I have enough fancy focals that there should be something for everyone.

I'm also changing some of my display. I started out showing all sets on mandrels in the cigar boxes. Then I went to wiring the sets together and leaving them loose in the boxes, spread out so they could be seen. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches.

The advantage of wiring sets together is that you can combine shapes and sizes, and the wired form seems to invite more handling. People who can afford a whole set are more likely to buy the whole set. The disadvantage is that people who might want one or two beads but not the whole set tend not to want to disrupt a set, and don't buy anything; and there are some people who think that the beads are already wired into their final form, and cannot imagine what to to with that form. The boxes also take longer to set up.

The advantage of having the beads neatly on mandrels in rows is that per-bead pricing is more obvious, and people on budgets are more likely to buy a couple, even when they cannot buy the whole set. Setting out the display takes less time--just open the cigar box, arrange, and you are done! The disadvantage is that the mandrels seem to invite less handling, and it is harder to show prices per set and per bead.

I think I am going to combine my display, depending on the type of bead. Elaborate, elegant, higher priced sets (or sets with multiple sizes of beads) I will leave wired together, loose in the boxes. Frit beads, however, where everything is one or two sizes, I plan to show in the boxes, on mandrels. I will continue to display focals in trays or cigar boxes with the grey square inserts. I'm hoping that this arrangement will make clear price differentials, as well as encouraging sales in a slow economy. One hopeful sign comes from Melanie Gulley at the Bead Shoppe, who says her sales continue to be constant -- people may not be able to afford the finished goods, but making something themselves is seen as a good, frugal bargain.