Latest necklace for sale

I just put this Madonna and Child pendant necklace into my Artfire store.  I'm not a religious person but I love the warmth of this image.  It looks like a vintage oil painting or an antique icon.  It is an image transfer onto polymer clay and the frame is real copper electroformed in place.   I feel like a mad scientist whenever I do the electroforming.

Image Transfer in Electroformed Bezel

I wanted to try a couple of things here.  First I made a bezel using the CaBezel mold, baked it and then electroformed it with a light coating of copper.  That came out looking terrific.  I put a Jax Brown patina on it to give it a slightly antique look.  Next I wanted to see if I could make a cabochon with an image transfer.   I put the image transfer on raw clay, then placed the CaBezel mold for the cabochon over it.  Placement was easy because you can see through the mold.  The image came out great - no distortion and it didn't stick to the mold (unlike the first one when I forgot to use water as a release.  LOL.  Guess I was in a hurry to see if it would work).  The cab is quite small, only 7/8 by 1 and 1/4 inches, but I got a lot of nice detail in the image.  Next I put the cab into the bezel and gently smoothed the top edges down to cover the cut sides of the clay and make it completely fill the bezel.  That little bit of extra space and the process of smoothing down the top is what gives it a real cabochon look.  I purposely didn't make the cab super thick because I knew I would be stretching the image in order to smooth the edges.  After that I baked it, sprayed it with PYMII to protect the transfer and keep the copper from darkening further and VOILA!  (That's for my Francophone Clayamie friends.)

For anyone interested in the CaBezels, they are available exclusively at Shades of Clay.

Progress with electroforming

Finally, I got something I like, although it is still just an experiment.  This pendant is an image transfer on a thin piece of white Premo clay.  I sealed the transfer and after it dried,  I painted on the conductive paint.   Next I glued on the quickly-done, home-made bail and put more conductive paint around the base.   I thought that the bail would also get covered in new copper so it would blend seamlessly into the "frame" but for some reason it didn't.  In addition, I was  hoping the copper would build up enough around the bail to give it a secure hold.  The bail seems to be tightly attached to the frame, but because the clay is so thin, when I pushed the bail back and forth to test the strength of the bond, it started to pull the frame away from the clay.  When I do this for real, I will make the clay thicker, the frame wider, and I'll figure out a better bail.  (I added a bail because it is difficult to suspend an object in the bath when there is no hole in it.)

Anyway, I really like that I could use an image transfer without getting any discoloration caused by the blue plating solution.  Although I got very little discoloration on the white back of the piece, sealing the image is a must.   Now to go experiment with Liver of Sulfur, something I have never used before.

A word of caution when electroforming.  The blue solution is a kind of acid.  Even though I was being careful,  one of the wires caught on something as I was removing it from the piece and it flipped a tiny little splash of the solution uncomfortably close to my eye.  Since it seems to be a mild acid, it didn't burn my skin, but I imagine it could do nasty things to an eye.  So, WEAR A SPLASH PROOF EYECOVERING.  Mine was sitting right there on the table.....

Electroforming Copper Experiments

The electroforming process in the most simple terms is this:  you paint an object with a special conductive paint, suspend it in a solution with some copper pieces ("anodes") and then run a small amount of electricity through everything.  Copper is removed from the anodes and deposited on the conductive paint on your object, the "cathode".

To experiment with the technical aspects of electroforming, I dug a few pieces of baked clay from my reject box and got to work.   On my first attempt at electroforming, I had the amps turned up way too high and got a very grainy, brittle, and breakable result, so this time I turned it very low.  Most of the gorgeous lampwork items I've seen have a fairly heavy coating of almost corroded-looking copper -  lumps and bumps - which I love, but I wanted to see if it was possible to get a thin, flat, and even coat.  The conductive paint can be thinned for spraying, so I thinned it somewhat and applied it to this earring.  I think I thinned it too much, and apparently the paint doesn't like going around sharp corners because I failed to get copper deposits all the way around.  As I mentioned, this was a reject piece and I had not sanded off the sharp cut edge.  I rinsed the piece in distilled water, dried it and reapplied some thicker paint making sure it was thick where it goes around the edges.  I definitely think rounded edges would be a good idea.  I also wanted to see how detailed the design could be using thin lines so I kind of scribbled a bit. 

Front

Back

The electroforming process imposes some design limitations.  You can't do polka dots, for example.  All areas of paint must be connected so that a continuous circuit is formed.  Also, the copper does not stick to the object it is on.  You can't just paint on a bead cap because it would fall off.  The object must be "caged" in some fashion.  I think of it sort of like wire wrapping - you have to have enough copper around the object such that it can't "fall out".  Also, since the copper has to go on the back as well as the front to keep from falling off, you have to think about designing the back.  You should, but I didn't.  I was in a hurry to try this process so in these examples, I just started painting without a plan.

Hollow lentil bead painted with conductive paint.

My funniest experience was with an old hollow lentil bead I had laying around.  I thinned the paint enough so that it would run, let it run down the front of the bead and then connected it in back.  I thought it looked kind of cool.  After it dried, I tried to electroform it but the darned thing wouldn't sink even after I held it down in the solution to let it fill up.  I even took a hypodermic needle and injected it with solution!  Finally I hung a weight on the bottom.  That kept it down in the solution but with all the manipulating I scratched off the paint in enough places that nothing was deposited.

More later.

Electroforming Copper on Polymer Clay

A couple of months ago I visited my sister in Pennsylvania and told her that I, like almost everyone in the jewelry world, was thinking of incorporating copper into my work. She said, "Well, if you are going to do copper, you should try electroforming." She is a fabulous lampwork artist and has made many electroformed glass beads, so we did a quick test to see if it would work with polymer clay. It did, so I started accumulating the items necessary to do it myself. Finally everything came together this week. This picture will show you why I felt like a mad scientist as I put the rig together.

I have an idea for some pendants using image transfers and some copper accents, but I was worried that the copper solution might harm the transfers or stain the light-colored clay. As a quick test, I took a piece of pearl clay with an image transfer, put a little of the electroconductive paint on it, then electroformed it for about 4 hours. The image transfer and clay seem to be fine, although I want to do another test, but I must not have had the paint thick enough because only parts of it received any deposits of copper. Clearly this technique will take some practice, so stay tuned.

You can check out my sister's beads at her Laurel Mountain Glass Artfire shop  or in her Ebay store.  She doesn't have any electroformed work for sale at the moment, but you can see some other artist's work here.