WIP

4 Nov 2010

New Adventures in Etching

In my previous blog post, I’d shown some new pendant designs using sheet copper, where in the past I’d worked largely with wire based designs. My intention, when stocking up on sheet, before I got distracted with some other ideas, was to set up to do some etching. I’d been accumulating the necessary materials over time and working out the methodology and designs in my mind and sketchbook.

I had in mind that I wanted to combine my love for photography and an extensive portfolio of available images with my jewellery making. It was my idea to take suitable photographs and put them into a stylised monochrome format in order to etch these into copper sheet and finish by oxidising to bring out the texture of the image. I had several images in mind that I thought would prove suitable and had been in my minds eye for some time. All of the designs I’ve made thus far have been based on a photograph I took, albeit some of them have ended up very abstract and not obviously image based at all. But this way I know that they’re unique and original.


I’ve always loved daisies and the first image I intended to try etching was one of my daisy photos. This is just a standard lawn daisy photographed in the grass outside my front door. I don’t like cutting the grass and getting rid of them, so often leave particularly abundant patches of them to grow unhindered.

I hoped that this particular image had enough contrast and detail that it would be self-evident in a very simplified form and set to work to improve the contrast, reduce the colours of the image and retouch it into a very much stylised graphic format, as shown.


The etching method I’d decided some time ago to work with was one using a pure and saturated salt solution in combination with an electric current from a battery holder. I liked the simplicity of working with household chemicals and whilst it does produce a potentially dangerous solution of copper salts that will need careful disposal, the process itself is pretty innoccuous and I was happy that I could work comfortably with the materials within my domestic work space.

The process necessitates putting the image onto the meticulously prepared (i.e. smooth and very clean) metal surface as a resist – something that will mask the copper where you don’t want it etching and leaving spaces where you do want to eat away at the surface. Consequently, the image needs to be worked in negative (and mirrorred), to give rise to the image the correct way round once appearing on the sheet metal surface. Hence my daisy image has been reversed.

As with many jewellery making techniques, meticulous preparation is at the heart of the eventual success – the results are directly proportional to the care taken setting it up – cut corners and you cut quality. And like many techniques, the core of the work is in the preparation, the process itself is relatively easy, but getting to that stage is where the effort lies.

And like many techniques, the methodology often needs fine tuning and honing as you work. It’s all very good working from a tutorial – and this one was detailed and extensive – but there’s no substitute for hands-on experience and practical problem solving – something you can only really do for yourself. So I knew as I set off to produce my first item that the initial results would not be perfect, in fact, I was lined up for a total fail, as others had said they hadn’t done well with this particular technique.

The first etched incarnation of the daisy, which is softer and more granular than I’d intended, but still significantly better than I was expecting.

But despite not working with the ideal materials (I was missing something that I hoped wasn’t going to be a deal breaker) and improvising a little, my first etch was better than I’d dared hope. The image had obviously transferred to the metal (using a laser printed original and heat) – which was actually the area where I was improvising and crossing my fingers – and the etch had happened as predicted.

It’s funny how past experience continues to inform current work. As a technical illustrator specialising in airbrush work, a technique I often used to transfer line illustrations to board to airbrush them, was to photocopy them and then iron this onto the art board, so I’d already settled on this as a potential transfer method.

From a long time in my past, some technical airbrush illustrations. The top one is the front suspension of an Aston Martin Vantage – which Aston Martin helped me with, I took measurements and reference photographs directly from parts on their shop floor. The second one is an SME tone arm – it resides on our turntable.

Where my print had missed in places, I’d patched it in with Sharpie, one of the recommended techniques, but that proved to be insufficiently resilient and gradually lifted during the etch and left holes in the design which then started to etch too. So the result was a little soft around the edges and had quite a lot of background noise where it should have been clean – see the photo above of the finished pendant.

On subsequent etches I used a metallic Sharpie and that was rather better – nail polish was better still, but hard to apply in small amounts. It was evident that the quality of the transfer of the design to the metal was the really vital stage. It’s also vital to cover all of the metal you submerge as anything not protected will etch. I also learned that any duct tape used to cover edges etc. needs to be burnished down tightly, any place where a droplet of etching solution can get inside will also etch.

Digging around on line for methods of transferring my images to the sheet metal (I was trying to avoid the delay and expense of getting some printed circuit board transfer paper, the recommended technique) I found a post in a model makers forum for making printed circuit boards where I think this chap had stumbled upon something that worked, by accident and so I decided it was worth a try as I did have the materials to hand. His recommendation was to use the laser printer, but print onto glossy inkjet photo paper. The glossy coating sticks to the toner too, making the transfer much thicker and with more distinct edges and when done, it lifts off relatively easily after soaking in some nail polish remover (I tried every solvent in the house before I made this particular discovery).

The image transferred to the cleaned copper sheet – you can see from the paper peeled away after transfer that not all of it transferred at the edges. See the finished pendant at the bottom of the article.

It worked incredibly well – the image transferred was crisper, thicker and looked much more resilient, see above. I now had to hold my breath while I waited to see if it stayed stuck to the metal during the etching process. I had visions of it dissolving clean off as I watched.

Take 2 – the initial and cleaned up etch from the better transfer – the edges are crisper and cleaner and the background has remained clean.

The finished pendant from etch no. 2. I cut the sheet to shape and rounded the corners and polished the flat surface, oxidising it to fill in the texture of the etch and only polishing back the top surface.

I was absolutely delighted with the results – a much cripser etch and the areas around the design had remained predominantly clean. I was so encouraged that I went with a much finer design next, with some lettering, to test how much detail would actually show in a sketch-like original. I haven’t yet oxidised it to see how good it looks finished, but I was incredibly happy with the results, it had worked rather better than I’d expected. This is my parents’ boxer Chelsea and this will go on a keyring for my Mum’s birthday. So I have to hope that she doesn’t read the blog.

The process to get an image onto metal started with a photograph which was actually the size I have it here. I partially digitised it as a sketch and then hand worked it to bring out more detail and make it a bit more blocky to be more suitable to etch, then it’s reversed and mirrored before printing – where your image is white will be etched, so had I used the middle positive image I would have got a raised Chelsea with an etched away background – I wanted the image etching, so had to make a negative and then mirror it to ensure she faced the right way and the writing wasn’t backwards.

The initial resist transferred to the sheet metal is on the left – the image area looked clean and detailed and my transfer paper was largely clean, which is a good sign. I blocked over the plain areas I wanted keeping clean with a mask of hand cut duct tape to be on the safe side. The resulting etch on the right – it too will be oxidised to show the detail, which I hope will look like a sketch on the metal.

The finished piece, oxidised and the flat polished surface partially polished back and hanging from
a heavy weight hand made oval jump ring.

My head is now fit to burst with the ideas tumbling over each other in there waiting to see the light. I just need to fine tune my workflow to make it more economic to make things to sell, the method at the moment is a little too work intensive to be profitable.

These are a couple of smaller pendants using the abstract designs I created by coarsely halftoning some photographs – one using a square ‘dot’ and the other was a linear pattern – the resist for the square one is shown above. I’ve finished them simply, with a very chunky oval shaped jump ring to keep the costs down by reducing the amount of work I do on them (they’re already quite labour intensive) – I like the tube bails I’ve used recently, but these add to the time I spend on a piece.

27 Oct 2010

Recent work in progress, now completed

I apologise for not making a very meaningful post, but as I’m going to be out of action for a few days, I thought that I’d bring you up to date on some of the work I showed previously in progress. I’m always interested to read other jeweller’s methodology when coming to a design, so thought I’d add some background on my own pieces.

Unfortunately some of the pieces I’d like to show you, that are responsible for quite a bit of my time recently, are custom items intended for gifts, so I need to keep them under wraps for the time being, I obviously don’t want to spoil any surprises.

I’ve been doing some work with copper sheet and showed two pendants in their finished but raw metal state. I’ve now oxidised them and decided upon a final finish.

The pendant and earring set shown below was cut from copper sheet and given a hand finished texture. Then shaped and polished and the smaller pieces drilled for the earwires and a tube bail soldered to the back of the pendant – I wanted to keep the front of it plain without interruption from a jump ring or other bail structure.

Please click on any of the photographs for a larger view.

I gave the upper surfaces a high degree of hand polished shine so that once oxidised, it would take on a nice gunmetal style sheen. I polished the oxidisation back a little from the surface to reveal the texture.

I’d originally intended soldering solid earwire hooks to the back of the earring pieces, but decided at their size, they might hang a little low and without articulation. Coming up to winter when ladies are more likely to wear coats and scarves, it might cause them to get pushed upwards during wear, so I went for a long stright drop earwire through a drilled hole instead.

Seeing them finished this way I know it was the right choice, as they move nicely and the sheen on the surface gives rise to more interest as they jiggle in wear. But I think next time, I’d split the difference and solder a loop to the back of them and then attach that to an earire, to keep the front surface plain, as I’d originally intended – that didn’t occur to me until after I’d drilled the holes.


I posted earlier that this particular pendant had proved troublesome – sometimes the plainest looking designs need to the most work to keep them that way. I didn’t feel that the resulting finish was up to the standards I am happy with, so this one will be mine. I had given the front surface of the copper a brushed satin finish and wasn’t sure whether to oxidise, antique or leave raw. I do love the gunmetal sheen of highly polished copper when fully oxidised, so went with that option, tumbling it extensively to burnish the flat surface. I hand polished the Sterling silver nuggets to contrast against the darker background.

This pendant too has a tube bail soldered on the back and I think I’ll probably wear it on my Sterling silver snake chain. I like the simple contemporary lines of it and hope to apply what I learnt in making this one to something similar to sell.


These earrings aren’t a new concept for me by any means, I have made several pieces featuring these wrapped copper buds, but a customer wanted something long and dramatic, so these deep teardrop shapes were born – and I made an extra pair for the shop.

I’ve oxidised the earrings and then polished back just the wrapped areas to accent the texture there. The hammered teardrop loops have been left dark and smooth to contrast the textured details at the bottom. The buds were left a rosy copper and whilst these aren’t as red as some I’ve done, they still have a pink glow to them. I’ve hung them from wrapped earwires to mirror the texture.

15 May 2010

The evolution of a design

I talked in my last blog about how designs come about and that I see the design process rather like a tree – ideas branch out and grow and sometimes overlap other ideas and merge with them.

The design process for me is one of evolution, one thought often cannonballs into another and takes you in another direction – often without any conscious intention or control whatsoever – in fact, for me, this process is sometimes so energetic that keeping it under some modicum of control is the tricky part.

The spiral links I’d been working with previously, in a smaller gauge of wire and size, hammered smooth and highly polished. Here worked in Sterling silver for earrings.

It would seem very unlikely for me to ever be heard uttering the words that ‘I’m stuck for inspiration’ or ideas or ‘don’t know what to work on’. I must have hundreds of sketches yet to take form and variations of pieces already made waiting for realisation, that my biggest problem is deciding how to prioritise on what I give my time. I spend much of my life in perpetual frustration where I have ideas I want to work on and are spilling out of my mind, but other things I just have to do first.

A single spiral link in an intermediate size, used as a connector in these leaf themed earrings. I adjusted the wire gauge to give rise to a leaf spiral around the same size as the glass leaves I wanted to use. Antiqued smoothly hammered copper.

I don’t think, perhaps beyond the age of about 12, I have ever uttered the words “I’m bored”. The concept is totally alien to me. I must have about a million things on my ‘to do’ list – things I want to work on, things I want to try, things I want to learn, books I want to read, places I want to visit – that life is way, way too short to squander any of it in being bored.

That’s how it has been this week design-wise – one idea morphing into another and some ideas I had on the back burner, bubbling away in my subconscious, suddenly gained momentum when brought into contact with some new thought.

I’m still not entirely done with the spiral links I’ve done a lot of lately. It’s such a versatile unit to work with that they take on different guises depending on the size you make them and the finish you give them. This week I went much smaller with them than the links I’d used in bracelets and they come out lovely and delicate and deliciously fluid when worked together and finished and polished to a high degree.

Hammering them smooth and then polishing them gives a reflective, tactile chain that you just want to stroke. They can be used singly as connectors with interest, or collectively as a chain. See photos above.

This was meant to be an experiment to see if the idea I’d sketched would actually work, but I quite like how it turned out as a finished piece in itself, so I finished it off by antiquing. The beads are unakite.

I’d seen some fabulous work in copper this week using lots of wire wrapping – this is something I admire, but perhaps don’t have the patience or technique yet to work on anything extensive, but I had some ideas I wanted to work through too – my initial idea was to make a large spiral link, as above, but wrap the bottom open section with beads.

I was trying to ascertain a methodology for attaching beads around the outside of the shape with wire wrapping and wanted to work with balled head pins and came up with this technique, which I worked out on paper first and seeing that there were flaws in my original ideas, they needed working out. The pendant above was the result of that process – the pins needed anchoring in some way to prevent them from being too easily bent away from the master shape they were wrapped around.

This pendant was the next incarnation along my ideas branch. It was made initially as a leaf (soldered and hammered into shape), that I was going to wrap with small green aventurine beads like the round pendant above, but I decided it was going to come out too large with beads as well, so wrapped it with just the ball ended pins and connected the fine chain in the wrapping as I went.

Having suspended it on the chain the way that I have and without the green beads I was intending, it now looks rather more like a heart than a leaf. I’d made the ball pins as a rosy colour and deliberately allowed this to remain as I antiqued and polished the piece.

Continuing along my branch of ideas, these earrings came about after working the heart/leaf without beads, I sketched some shapes that would work well with that particular wrapping technique – it needed smooth round outer curves or straight lines ideally and this shape allowed me to get a ‘circle’ without soldering, as I wanted to only part wrap the shape and this balanced the bottom detail and intense texture with further interest at the top.

I decided that to balance the round earring, the earwires needed to either be round in shape, which didn’t work as nicely as I hoped, or in some other way reflect the details. So I went with a long straight drop earwire, to drop the wide earrings well below the ear and mirrored the wrapping with a wrapped loop rather than an eye to connect the earrings.

After oxidising, I decided to only polish back the wrapped details and leave this highlighted against the darker gunmetal finish of the scroll and I also highlighted the wraps on the earwires too. I think, having taken that particular evolutionary journey this week through these designs, this is the one I like best.

23 Apr 2010

This week I have mostly been working in copper

“The world is an old woman, and mistakes any gilt farthing for a gold coin; whereby being often cheated, she will thenceforth trust nothing but the common copper” Thomas Carlyle, Victorian essayist.

Hammered copper, heavily antiqued, spiral link bracelet.
Please click on any of the photographs for a larger view.

The last couple of weeks have been hectic – an assortment of commissions to complete, work commitments, domestic dramas, our visiting son (I’d like to think he comes home from university to catch up with his Mum, but in reality he was only availing himself of my fast broadband connection, as the dent in my bandwidth allowance will testify) and even some time away over Easter.

So if anyone happened to be so devoid of entertainment they were monitoring my publicly visible work rate, they’d perhaps consider me tardy of late – I haven’t seemingly had much to show for the long hours and exhaustion levels.

I spent a lot of time before we went away for Easter in preparing things to take with me to work on; part-made components to finish, components that I could make into ideas I had etc. – all in case of bad weather and the need to find things to do. I had enough materials with me to make a hundred pieces of jewellery. All I eventually managed was this necklace (with matching earrings) and another pair of earrings. Antiqued copper and green glass.

I quite liked the smooth look of the back of the antiqued bracelet above, where polishing off the oxidisation, left a pattern of colours on the smooth copper, from bright peach to a deep gunmetal type blue/grey. So I made another version without the hammered texture and will give this the same colour finish. I sometimes just like to enjoy them in their raw state before I give them their final colour.

A spiral wrapped Botswana agate bracelet in it’s raw copper just-tumbled state, which has since been deeply oxidised and extensively tumbled to a deep gunmetal warm grey.

But behind the scenes, like a little hammer-wielding gnome, I have been quietly (not that my hammering can ever be claimed to be quiet) producing several new pieces. But the making of the jewellery is the fun bit – that’s where I find my joy, peace from the world and my personal satisfaction – I get so embroiled with the details of shapes and the engineering of making things work properly that the world just passes me by and I often only come to my senses when the growling in my belly reminds me that I really should have had lunch several hours ago.

Hammered and elongated soldered chain link earrings, with rosy copper molten buds.

But once complete, after enjoying it for a short while on my own, I must present the result of my efforts to the world. I really can’t expect pieces to sell if they’re still sitting on my work bench unseen. And this is the part, like most artisan sellers and self-representing artists, that I find most tedious, time-consuming and plain disagreeable.

A pendant in progress, which has since been antiqued. I love to see raw shiny just-tumbled copper, so often take WIP photos at this stage. Just because the colour is so pretty.

As someone who has listed photography as a passion for an alarmingly large number of years, I do not find photographing my work to be in the least bit enjoyable. And despite having now done quite a lot of it and to have gradually honed my workflow to be about as efficient as I think I can get, it still seemingly takes an inordinate amount of time – far longer than it feels like it should or I’m happy to give it. And don’t even get me started on the process of measuring everything, working out a price and writing appropriate descriptions. I get through it by issuing myself with incentives – if I finish listing two items, I can work on the bracelet I’d started etc.

Large Serpentine beads spiral wrapped with copper into this bracelet with hand crafted hook and an adjustable chain closure and Aventurine dangle. The copper has been antiqued.

So, in the purely selfish interest of trying to make it look like I have actually done something of late, I present some of my latest pieces and the first photographs I’ve taken of them. I’ve also included some work in progress photos (WIP) as I often take photographs for my own reference and they don’t otherwise ever see the light of day.

Only another 25 pieces and several hours wrangling photo props and cameras and then manipulating images left to go!