During the first week of May, I taught two terrific jewelry workshops at the Mendocino Art Center. It was so beautiful and the students were especially great!
The first class was Etching Without Acid and we were able to get some pretty amazing results.
Here the delightful young artist, Priya, puts some finishing touch-ups on the PnP resist.
After etching, I was able to offer the brass and nickel plates that were etched to the Swivel Locket class participants for roll-printing. This lead to even more really wonderful results
This pattern was a rubber stamp which I stamped onto grid paper for regular spacing, then I photocopied the pattern to reduce and reverse it. Finally, the pattern was photocopied onto PnP paper and applied as resist to a nickel plate. The Etching without Acid process gave the pattern a good deep etch in about 2 hours, which was then roll-printed on to Karen's sterling silver. Karen Murad then hydraulically pressed the silver into the 1-inch triangular Matrix Die for these locket cases. Way to go - Karen!
Not to be out done - Cole Kickliter and Karen Carpenter worked together as "safety partners" on the hydraulic press.
Cole was able to create some lockets that truly imbody the voice of the maker.
Many other Swivel Lockets were made and solder free beads as well. All the patterns imprinted on the metal were from etched metal created in the Etching Without Acid workshop. The creative application of those patterns for lockets and beads was FUN to watch and participate in as an instructor! Thank you ALL!
Just so you know - I will be returning to Mendocino Art Center in August of this year. August 1st-5th, I will be teaching my wildly popular Cold Connections for Stone Setting class and then from August 6th-8th I will be continuing the stone setting theme with the Custom Settings for Faceted Stones. I supply faceted stones from both of these classes and the inspiration for the projects in these workshops can be seen on the covers of the March 2010 and the January-February 2011 issues of Lapidary Journal/Jewelry Artist magazine. Please Join me in Mendocino, we are going to have fun!