iKandies Gets to Play With Hammers!

Recently, iKandies has been delving into the world of sheet metal and hammers.  A new book by Lisa Niven Kelly, "Stamped Metal Jewelry: Creative Techniques and Designs for Making Custom Jewelry" caught our eye because of the unique designs she had included that used stamping techniques.  We watched the DVD tutorial which outlined the steps needed to make clear stamped designs on metal.  She also included tips such as her "tilt n' tap" method of ensuring that a great impression is made on your metal.   Another helpful tip that she shared is lightly polishing the surface of the metal to be stamped.  This causes a reflection on the metal and it then becomes easier to see where to place your stamp.  This is a great help for lining up letters if you are stamping a word or phrase on your metal!

We checked our supplies and found some of the items we needed at Bead Fest Philadelphia and others online.  Beaducation, P. J. Tools and Fusion Beads are just a few of the places to find great stamps.  Not only will you see a variety of letter designs, but many design stamps representing shapes and images of people, animals and other items that will make your designs personal.

Aren't these the cutest stamps!

Next, we selected a project from Lisa's book:


We practiced stamping several designs, utilizing the "tilt n' tap" method.  It works great, by the way!

Then we started with our design:  cutting the copper sheet metal into a pendant shape, filing the edges, taping the shape to a bench block and filling the front with our chosen design.  Here's the project after stamping is complete and holes have been punched along the edges.  Now we're ready for wire wrapping the edge!  But first, we'll need to give the pendant and the wire a bath in Liver of Sulfur. This will give the piece an "antiqued" look.  Then the pendant and wire will be lightly polished to remove excess oxidation from the design and refine the "antiqued" look.

Silver Black can be used in place of Liver of Sulfur on sterling silver, brass and nickle.  It can be applied with a Q-tip just to the area to be darkened (the words stamped onto a charm, for example) for immediate results. A Pro Polish pad can be used to polish off excess black.

Please check back on this site for our continuation blog of this project as we oxidize, wire wrap the edge of the pendant, make the bail and attach the pendant to a chain.