Saturday, February 28, 2009

New found process for pendants

I know that I said I would start learning how to do free motion and quilting. But this process piqued my interest. I found it on Tammy Powley's newsletter, 'About Jewelry Making'. It was the process of rubber stamping on glass pendants and embossing them. How could you get the ink of a rubber stamp to stay on the glass? Wouldn't it rub off? And was the process durable?

I had a pendant that wasn't exactly glass. It was sold to me as aquamarine but I think it is just dyed quartz. I decided to use that. I looked through my stamps for something small enough to fit on the stone. It was kind of a ho hum stone to begin with, so a prime candidate for this process. I first tried to stamp onto the stone. Not as easy as you would think. My stone was too rounded. I liked the dragonfly that was on the stamp but couldn't get it to stamp properly. Every time it either smudged or just got too gloppy!! You are supposed to stamp your piece and then sprinkle embossing powder on it, shake it off and heat it. All worked well. I did have to take a clean dry brush and get all the excess powder that wouldn't shake off. But the image was still just too harsh.

The package instructions for the embossing powder said you should use pigment ink for the process for it to work. I remembered that I had some Micron ink pens with pigment ink in them. So, I decided to draw the dragonfly with the pen and then emboss. After about 5 or 6 failed attempts I finally got an image I liked. I also tried two silver embossing powders and finally settled on the one that matched the sterling silver bezel around the stone. After everything had cooled and set, I added two Swarovski flat crystals. I am pretty pleased with the results. Does it stay on? You bet!! I had to remove the failures with a razor blade and nail polish remover. It should wear well for years. I imagine with hard wear it will eventually chip off like any other hand painted piece. It is much more silver looking than the picture shows. Now I need to see how it will look with a chain or beads. .........

1 comment:

  1. I really love the pendant with the dragonfly! What a great job you did. I love trying new techniques, especially when they turn out better then you expected! Your blog is coming along nicely! Also...love your work space in the following entry!
    Take care!

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