Endings and Beginnings... Enamelling Course Lesson 1

Not much time to recover from the end of year at my jewellery school. The very next day I started a 3 day enamelling course that will take place over 3 weeks. There is a reason for my frantic learning - I spent 13 years detached from my creative self, and now it has all come rushing back so I am eager to catch up on some of the time I lost...

These are no masterpieces - I am very aware of that fact. But everyone has to start somewhere :-)
We first had to anneal and counter enamel the pieces of copper. Then for the rest of the day we did simple sifting techniques - first a base layer, then sifting using paper stencils, sgraffito, fingerprinting using handcream (I didn't have time to do that one) and using gum as a glue to keep the enamel where you want it (that sort of works sometimes)...

Here are the pieces - on the plus side they are shiny and smooth, have not warped, and the colours were pretty much what I expected them to be. I surprised myself by liking the pink!

Next week we will be doing 'wet packing'.