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.

We've been beading for over eight years and have always found it a challenge to find high quality supplies at a reasonable price.  We have yet to locate a decent online bead store directory, so many hours have been spent scouring websites for the products you just can't get at a local bead store. For example here's a picture of a recent purchase made from Rio Grande.  Due to our increased interest in copper sheet and copper wire, we decided to purchase larger quantities of both so that we would not run out in the middle of a project. By larger quantities, we mean 1# spools of copper wire in 14 through 20 gauges. We also purchased 2 sheets of 6" x 12" copper sheet.

iKandies has found that purchasing metals from a company like Rio Grande who specializes in this type of product results in higher quality and better prices.  Many online bead sites specialize in large amounts and varieties of gemstones, crystals, glass, and findings, and offer sheet metal and copper wire in smaller amounts ( 3" x 3" sheets or 10 to 20' wire coils).  Small pieces of metal or lengths of wire are fine for the occasional metal accent piece but these items come at a cost.  The price break you get buying in larger amounts really pays off. 

And if you're really interested in getting a "price break" on copper, hunt around for unused or left over copper wire from building sites.  The next photo shows the copper wire (about 26 gauge) iKandies inherited  from a do-it-yourself heating and air conditioning project done by a relative.  We have used this wire for many, many projects, including the wire wrapped Rivoli pendant necklace shown in the picture.

Copper sheet and wire are easy to work with and make beautiful jewelry pieces.  Pure copper can be textured, painted, enameled, oxidized, treated with a patina or torch fired with gorgeous colorful results. If you haven't worked with copper, branch out and try it for your next project.  You'll be pleasantly surprised with the results.