This is my last instalment on the workshops I took a couple of weekends ago. I took courses in riveting, enameling, etching, soldering and resin. Last week I talked about the resin and etching classes so this week I'll talk about the riveting, enameling and soldering classes.
My second workshop of the weekend was the soldering class. I was excited about finally getting to use my butane torch. I've taken a soldering course before but we used an oxy-Acetylene set-up that was quite intimidating and expensive. As the workshop was a beginner class most people were in the same boat as me. We learned about safety. Our project was "bubble" earrings in sterling silver. I doing this project we used hard, medium and soft solders. I also learned not to place my small silver "bubbles" close together on the fire brick because if you over heat them the just melt into a ball. Here's the result of my class.
They need a bit more polishing and some earring wires but I'm quite happy with them.
The next morning I took a riveting class. This is definately not an activity to do if you have a hang over. A lot of pounding with hammers as we also textured the metal before riveting. We got to play with the fun expensive tools from one of the supplies from the tradeshow.
This is the results of the class
They just need the finishing touches, earring wires and a chain.
The last workshop for the weekend was copper enameling. Some people fell in love with this right away and some not so much. I'm still on the fence about it as the results seemed very hit and miss. The kit that came with this class was awesome, it contained enough materials for us to take home and experiment with enameling on our own. I plan to get some books about it and practice with it some more. I did have a few pieces from the class that I really liked and I've posted them in my etsy shop.
From my shop
These were some of my others:
I'm hoping to work with these new techniques and I'll be posting my results in the future.
