Jewelry Making Outside The Box

A Remarkable Way To Enamel in the Dresden Style

My friend, Kim Jelley, is a talented and prize-winning doll artist.   I got to know her some time ago when she approached me to purchase tiny parts to make jewelry to go on her fairy dolls.

Kim is also a lover of old charm jewelry.  She became fascinated with the old enamelled puffy heart charms and big effusive charm bracelets that she saw other artists presenting at Ebay.

After purchasing some of my remaining dresden enamel, she began to think....hey....I can do something like this!  So, she availed herself of some of my pewter ox Victorian style stamped heart charms and the results were AMAZING!  Have a look!

Be SURE you click on these pictures to get the best look.  Kim has painted on the plated metal in a delicate style even MORE interesting than you'd see in the typical old dresden enamels.   She uses the paint pens I sell on this site and regular acrylic paints you can buy in any crafts store.

Kim has a great eye for detail.  Do you see the little heart lock at the back?   This is a sterling locket with hinge clasp at the top, and this is what closes the bracelet.

Obviously Kim is no stranger to technique and has a very fine hand.

Here is an even closer look.   Now I have to tell you, Kim has sealed all the painted charms with ENVIROTEX LITE resin finish.   She has done it perfectly, making sure there remain no air bubbles to dry into the work (you blow on the stuff to get them out) and has let them cure thoroughly.   The result is a HARD AS GLASS, LUMINOUS finish that will NOT chip, will not crack...it's amazing.

And, it works well over plating as well as bare sterling metal.

Kim says painting the charms is very laborious and that it takes her all day just to do 10-12 charms, a little at a time.   Though these pix don't show it, almost all of her charms are done on BOTH SIDES, sometimes one color of pattern and type of design on one side, and another on the reverse.

Her bracelets are a labor of love and I feel so honored to be the owner of one. 

You might like to try doing this....you may not have these results at first if you are not an experienced painter, and I will tell you, her work is very fine and small....but, you might just like to simply paint and colorize stamped charms.   I think that's where I'll start!   I used to tole paint but it's been many moons ago....so I'll be starting easy!

Hope you enjoyed seeing Kim's work.  I know I am enjoying being the proud owner of this bracelet, which is indeed also artist-signed!

Other Ways to Colorize Metal

Today, most enamelling you find in the commercial jewelry trade is epoxy resin.  This can be hand-painted or injected with a small syringe if the base suits.   

You've seen this sort of enamelling all the time and maybe didn't even know it.  Usually it is done over plating.   Here is an example of a bracelet I once made using contemporary earring parts that were enamelled in this way:

At home, you can epoxy resin with a product called Colores or another called Durenamel.   They are alot alike and involve your mixing the two-part base in just the perfect proportions, and adding color or using pre-colored resins.

The resin must cure and you must have a dust-free environment for good results.

Another way to enamel that will give this sort of appearance is with a product called Pebeo.  It is made, I believe, in Canada...but widely available in the United States.   You can find it in crafts stores like Hobby Lobby and Michael's.   It's available in paint-on form or paint pen form.

Pebeo requires curing in a toaster oven that you would dedicate to its use.  If you already have one that you typically use to bake polymer clay, that's fine; but you do not want to use a toaster oven that you use to cook food.

First, with Pebeo, your raw OR plated brass must be COMPLETELY FREE of any machine oil or dirt whatever.  I suggest an alcohol bath.  Then you simply paint it on, let it 'set' and bake.  The results are remarkable....it's tough and hard as nails when done right.

With Pebeo, however, if you don't get that item perfectly clean, the enamel will lift right straight off of the piece in a sheet....or at least will bubble.   So it can be a pain in the neck, but when you have success with it, the success is SWEET indeed.

Another product that is NOT an enamel but a brass wash is called Color Magic.  I love this product and used to carry it.  I may even carry it again one day, but meantime I continue to use it in my own work because it just has a look all its own on metal. It comes in a little bottle with a brush in the cap, like nail polish.

You can use it on raw brass or plated brass alike.   It allows the integrity or design of the metal to still come through.  Some enamels just blob up and you lose patterning.  That will never happen with Color Magic.   Here are some things that I made using brass colorized with Color Magic:

If you click on this photo and have a good look you will see what I mean, the detail of the brass still comes through.  Color Magic needs to be sealed after you let it thoroughly dry.  You can do this with the sealant they make, OR you can seal it with spray-on lacquer from the hardware store OR Fimo Lacquer (the kind made by Eberhard-Faber.)

Another way to colorize your brass is with simple acrylic paints and my paint pens offered on the site here at bsueboutiques.com.  You will need to seal them for best effect, however.

This can be done with Envirotex Lite, again something you can get at Michael's or Hobby Lobby.  Envirotex Lite is a resin product that must be mixed correctly and applied in a dust-free environment, and you let it air cure.   The results of doing this are downright spectacular.   I'll show you in my next post!

Beautiful Old Enamels I Have Known

About six years ago, I made the acquaintance of some extraordinary folks who'd worked in the jewelry components trade for many, many years.   Not only did I manage to learn alot of cool stuff about how things are made, but through these folks I got  to know others, and the opportunity to buy some big stashes of some remarkable things:  old jewelry enamels.

The enamels I'll start off with in this post are the hard-glass type.   As I understand it, these are made in the classic way, powdered glass enamel, melted in a kiln or large firing oven under great heat.   The metals used, for the most part, are what is called 'gilding brass.'   Much of this brass is indeed still made  and you well may find gilding brass components on my site.

Gilding brass is simply very heavy-gauge brass ideally suited to being enamelled.

Here is a fine example of gilding brass with glossy hard glass enamel.  (Don't forget you can click on the pic to get a big view). The brass is still available, but as I understand it, no one in the production jewelry trade in the US is still doing this sort of enamelling.   A friend from Providence said he knew of one older gentleman who was still doing a little production work in his garage, but he felt there was no one else. I tend to take his word for it, as the guy gets around, LOL.   If you know of production enamelists, by all means, do tell!

Most of this sort of work is nowadays done with epoxy resin.

Here is a shot of something that I made which really showcases the old hard glass enamel.   This piece practically made itself, I had such a huge stash of this wonderful material at hand.  Of course, that's no longer the case, it's long ago been sold off.

Another type of hard glass enamel is called dresden enamel.  Some folks also call it guilloche.  It involves first of all a brass blank that has some patterning to it, usually circular or some other sort of embossing.  The piece itself is generally dapt up just a bit.    The whole item is hard glass enamelled, then painted with a delicate rose.  The piece is then sealed.

I had the opportunity to buy thousands and thousands of pieces of dresden enamel a few years ago.  Like the hard glass enamel, I have virtually nothing left of it but some photos.  But, when I show you what dresden enamel is, you will recognize it right away.  It was widely used  in vintage costume jewelry and as decorations on small purses and compacts.

Here are some very typical dresden enamels.   The lavender background heart, however, was not typical.  Usually you find them in the robin's egg blue, white, and sometimes black.

You'll also find them in green and yellow.  Here are pix of stuff I made with some of them:

These have both hard glass enamels and dresdens in them, and the brass was colorized with Color Magic.

Here you see earrings made with hard glass enamel butterflies and teeny tiny little dresden hearts.

Another type of enamelling is called Cold Paint, and basicly it's spray enamel, just like you get out of a can at the hardware store.   Remember the flower power pins of the 60's?   Some of those had fired, baked on enamel, but alot of them were cold paint.   Here is a picture of some parts I had that were used to make these pins:

The parts used to make this material are, of course, simply brass stampings.   They were enamelled and then layered and usually put together with a rivet right down the center.  This was done with a large industrial kick-press.

It's no stretch to find these parts, still, because the dies are still very much in service.   To mock this look you would simply need a few cans of spray paint.   The best way to do it is if you had a tent for spray painting; many miniaturists keep them in their workshops and usually a hobby supply store will have them for sale.  They are a bit of an investment, though.

So, you'll want to use that spray paint in a well-ventilated area.

To achieve a vintage look, spray the reverse side white.  Let that cure, then do the front side in a couple of light coats, letting the paint completely dry between each coat.   You will want to seal it with spray lacquer (I like the triple-thick kind) as if you don't, it will scratch easily.

In my next post I'm going to talk to you about Epoxy Resin, Pebeo and Color Magic.

Wow....it's been awhile

Normally this time of year we're slow....that's one of the reasons I decided to start the blog in the summer.   I guess folks are catching on that, as an artist I have a good eye for the unsual and distinct....and they're availing themselves of our large Ebay stash. 

It's been all I could do to get inventory counted and sorted, photographed and put back up.   Meantime, too, we're frantically trying to get stuff on the site re-stocked and new stuff up for fall.   I put up some neat stuff just today.  Be sure to check it out.

I'd promised you a discussion of hard glass enamel, dresden enamel, and cold paint.   I took some time to go through my picture archives so I could show you some interesting items.  I also have some fab ideas on how you can mock these finishes, and some photos of a remarkable charm bracelet that a friend recently made for me from some of the charms we carry.   She has trained herself to mock the old dresden, and the result is really almost better than the real thing.   SO....

Read on!