Mediterranean-inspired silver wire wrapped necklace with blue enamel pendant and turquoise crystals

The new semester for my enameling class starts in just a few days so I've been trying to finish some incomplete projects. For the past couple of days, I've been working on this Mediterranean-inspired silver wire wrapped and enamel necklace:

I made this blue and turquoise pendant using a technique called sgraffito. Basically, you put down one layer of enamel. Then, when you sift on a second layer, you use something sharp, like a toothpick, to swirl a design into the fine glass powder. When you eventually heat the second layer of enamel in the kiln, the design pops and you can clearly see the two colors.

This technique works best if you use dark and light colors so you can see the contrast. I've done a few sgraffito pieces in red and black, but when I tried to do red and yellow, it didn't work as well. The contrast just wasn't sharp enough. I really like these blues, though (surprise, surprise, right?). One woman in my class said that it reminded her of Mediterranean jewelry, which was a huge compliment since I adored the pieces I saw in Greece.

I'll let you in on a little secret: I'd originally used the copper square to make a champleve pendant, but it didn't turn out well ... and so I covered it with new enamel and went for a different concept. That's the beauty of this type of art! That's also why this piece is so thick; I had to use several layers of enamel, more so than usual, to cover the depressions that I'd etched for champleve. Still, I like the thickness; it gives the pendant more depth and makes it look even more like a Greek tile. My husband even asked if it's made of stone, so it's definitely sturdy.

I really need to go through the rest of my enameling bag and see what else I find. Meantime, check out the rest of my jewellery at Naomi's Designs and MayaGirl Creations.

Tales From Enameling Class 3/4/14

My latest enameling project is my largest and most detailed so far. I'm making a bib necklace that's going to be constructed of over 40 separate enameled pieces. Each piece has a sgraffito design so it's turning out to be a lot of work!

Here are a few pieces that I've done so far:

The squares are going to make up the base of the necklace and the long strips are going to hang from them, making up the bib. There will be a layer of blue square crystals in between. And I still have to make the wire wrapped chain. In other words, this thing is going to have about a million parts and is going to take me all semester to complete.

I saved myself a tiny bit of labor by purchasing ready-made 24 gauge copper blanks. Still, I have so much to do! When enameling, you actually have to put layers of glass on each side so that the piece is stable and doesn't bend from the weight of the glass. So I've had to put three layers of counter on each blank to match the three layers of glass on the front (for the front, I use a foundation of white enamel, then add aqua and Prussian blue). To get the swirls, I'm using a wire and etching out the design while the top layer (the darker blue) is still in powder form. When I heat the pieces, the swirly pattern comes out.

As of now, I've completed the squares. I like how they turned out because they look like Moroccan tiles. There's a tiny bit of burning in the center, but the darker sections make them look even more like tiles, I think.

I'm having a more difficult time with the strips. For one thing, they're really hard to flatten. I've applied extra counter, I've put them under an iron while they're still hot... but they have a slight curve to them. I might just have to keep them that way.

There are also so many of them to do! I have only seven squares, but over 30 strips... so it feels like a never-ending task. However, I just saw the movie Tim's Vermeer, in which an inventor makes his own version of a Vermeer painting in order to prove that the artist used optics and lenses. At one point, the inventor spent days and days simply painting tiny dots to bring out the fibers in a blanket. At least I'm making swirls, which is fun. I could be creating literally millions of dots, which would get old pretty quickly!

I'm excited about this necklace, though. It's unlike anything else I've done so far and is going to be really cool when it's complete. So stay tuned! My silver wire wrapped enamel tile necklace will be finished... someday.

Meanwhile, check out the rest of my wire wrapped and enamel jewellery at Naomi's Designs and MayaGirl Creations.

Tales from Enameling Class: Hot Topic

We had a little excitement in my enameling class this week: one of the new students almost set the studio on fire! As she removed her piece from the kiln, she somehow dropped the red-hot trivet onto a wood burnishing tool... and the tool burst into flames. Luckily, my teacher managed to extinguish the fire quickly and no one was hurt.

The woman was pretty embarrassed and kept apologizing, but we told her that in enameling, there are mostly "happy accidents." We've all had stories of overheating pieces or dropping things, or in my case, stupidly grabbing a still-hot-trivet and burning myself. I've never actually set anything on fire -- yet -- but it's easy to do something kind of careless when you're working with kilns, torches and other dangerous equipment. I've been making jewelry long enough that I feel comfortable with the tools, but this incident reminded me that as skilled as someone is, we still have to be careful. As I pointed out to the woman, my teacher keeps an aloe plant in the class, just in case someone gets injured. I told her to consider this incident a "right of passage." She'll get the hang of it -- and she'll be making beautiful pieces in no time.

Other than that, the class was business as usual. I brought in some munchkins to celebrate my birthday and began work on a new sgraffito pendant. I didn't have any new copper pieces with me, so I took an old "failed" project and layered enamel on top of it. I'd tried to make a champleve heart, but the depression wasn't deep enough so half of the enamel was peeling off. I scraped out as much as I could then covered that side of the metal with about five layers of deep blue glass. On the other side, I put down a light blue base and a dark blue topcoat; I then carved out a swirly design in the dark blue enamel so that you can see the light blue enamel beneath. I'll eventually post a photo when the necklace is complete, but my teacher said that it looks Moorish. Then she realized how many coats of enamel I used and was like, "But why is it so thick?"

I have this idea for a sgraffito bib necklace that I plan to work on. I want to use copper squares as the main part of the necklace and then attach long, thin strips of copper for the "bib." All of them will have a similar sgraffito design. It's going to take me weeks to make this, but I think it'll look really nice. I'm just trying to figure out what colors to use. I'm leaning toward the light/dark blue combo, but red and black might work, too.

Meantime, this has been a productive semester of enameling so far, despite the snow! To see more of my work, including my wire wrapped jewelry and enamel pieces, head to Naomi's Designs and MayaGirl Creations.

Red and black enamel sgraffito pendants

Each semester, I'm trying to learn a new technique in my enameling class. This week, I made two red and black sgrafitto pendants: one with red and black spirals and one with a red and black geometric pattern:

Sgraffito basically involves laying down one color of enamel, then adding a coat with a different color; before heating the fine glass powder and making the top coat harden, you use something sharp (like a piece of wire or as I used a sharp wooden stick) to carve out a design. You can then see the color of the undercoat beneath. It's a really cool way to show a contrast between colors and make up a funky pattern.

What's funny is that I didn't even realize that what I was doing had a name. I explained my idea to my teacher and she was like, "Oh, that's sgraffito." And here I thought I was being so clever, LOL!

To highlight the contrast between the red and black, I slightly underfired the black layer. I usually keep pieces this size (these squares are about an inch in height and width) in the kiln for a minute, but I took these out at only 40 seconds. The enamel is still hard, but it has a rougher texture; it's not quite as shiny as the red beneath. I like that it looks slightly raw and unfinished; I think that it adds some more depth to the design and makes it easier to see the different layers.

I need to make some more large show pieces (happily I've sold most of mine!) and have an idea for a sgraffito bib necklace. Sometimes I wish I had my enameling class every day because I'm anxious to get to work on it.

To purchase these pieces or my other jewellery, head to Naomi's Designs or MayaGirl Creations.