(no subject)

[alexseanchai]

So I finally got it together enough to do the patina thing on my stampy metal jewelry.



These are the QUEER discs from the earrings I showed y'all the other week, plus FEMINIST discs for earrings and a pendant. Note the lovely copper hue and the lack of legibility at any sort of distance.



Same discs, post-patina. Note that the lovely copper hue is ALL GONE and the legibility has not improved any. I swear the discs weren't in the yellow gunk that long—in fact I redunked the big one because it was all coppery still, and it was only down for a few seconds that time and came up all dark—and I think it was actually less strong a mix than the instructions say because it came out of the bottle all gooey and I think a lot of that stuck to the teaspoon measure instead of dissolving into the 1/3 c water. (I was not about to use a full tablespoon of the gunk for five dinky little discs, so I divided both the gunk and the water by three.)

I like the look, don't get me wrong. It's just that the idea was to have lovely copper-hued discs with black text that might actually be readable without someone having to stick their nose practically up against the jewelry in order to read it!

Though it occurs to me, these discs (being from the Bead Buddy disc thing I got for experimentation with) are probably not of the high quality that I got from Rio Grande. So I have lots more discs and it might work better with those!

(nenya_kanadka, we are obviously still in a holding pattern re the stampy metal earrings you wish to commission. Unless you like the look of any of these, in which case, merry Giftmas!)

ETA: At el_staplador's prompting, I applied steel wool to polish. (Probably not as fine steel wool as I ought to have done)



As you see, the lovely copper tone is back and the legibility is awesome!



So I went on and finished the jewelry. The FEMINIST earrings are just stick the discs on earhooks. The FEMINIST pendant is 24" of copper chain from AC Moore with a a what's the damn word for the clasp with the circle on one side and the rod on the other. The QUEER earrings I felt needed a little more punch, so I went and got copper eyepins and my seed bead stash and now the QUEER earrings dangle from rainbows!

(nenya_kanadka, PM me details of what you want now that I'm confident I have enough skill to accomplish it. I warn you I may not accomplish it well, but I am sure I can do it now. The discs I've got are 1" and 2" copper rounds, plus two stray half-inch ones—the smaller size shown above. And we can talk price in PM.)

Comments

[el_staplador]

What about polishing the dunked discs so that the background returns to copper colour and the lettering remains dark? May not work - I've never worked with copper - but seems plausible.

[redsixwing]

If the steel-wool finish isn't to your taste, very fine sandpapers are what I use when removing patina/finishing metal to mirror bright. A good hobby shop or any automotive place ought to have them - wet/dry papers in various grits. I use them enough to consider them basic equipment.

If it's prohibitive to get them, I could send you a sampler.

[sylvaine]

Oooh,these look really great now!