Friday, April 06, 2007

Year Of Jewellery


This is my first contribution into the YOJ (year of jewellery)

I was following the theme " April Showers". For me, part of the appeal in participating in the year of jewellery was to challange myself by keeping to the theme where possible.
After thinking about it for a while I had a clear idea what I wanted to do. I decided to try a product ITS because I wanted to transfer text on to metal. It did occur to me that most of the projects on the manufacturer's site included photos, but not actual text being transferred to the metal surface ......but did that deter me?......No!
What did deter me was that after following the instructions to the letter (no pun intended!!) my lettering looked awful! The text adhered to the metal just fine but with a misty looking surround that was not uniform or attractive.
I ended up sanding the whole lot off. I'm not bagging the product though - I'll do some more experimenting - I'm sure it works fine with photos etc though, which I think is what it's mainly intended for.

A glass of wine and a lot of thought later I decided I'd get my text on the metal if it was the last thing I did! And I did.......well sort of........
I printed the text out on acetate and overlayed it on the sheet metal instead of using the transfer product.

I have mixed feelings about this - I'm disappointed the transfer medium didn't do what I wanted it to do, but at the same time I'm pretty pleased with my problem solving abilities to achieve the result that is the same as what I had in mind at the beginning even though the methods were not what I set out to do.

I know you metal smith people are thinking " why didn't you just etch the text on to the metal?" Well, I was getting around to that - but not just yet - that's why I had bought the acetate - to experiment some more with etching......Stay tuned :) Pin It

No comments: