The assignment for this was to sink a bowl from a flat sheet of bronze and then solder a foot to it. My original plan for this involved the leaves to swirl up around the side of the bowl and it would sit flat, but after I got it a little bit soldered on there I looked at it from the bottom and it sort of told me what it wanted to be. I wound up soldering a little catch to the inside so it would hang on the wall. For the patina I used liver of sulpher, but in order to make it stick to the bronze I had to copper-flash it, which involves heating it up cherry red and then quenching it. I quenched it in pickle, but I’m not sure if that’s actually necessary, I think it might work if it were quenched in water. After quenching it I painted it erratically with liver of sulpher, waited for it to dry, then did a rough circular sand on the bowl to bring some of the bronze back, then sanded the leaves with a more linear process so they would stand out a little more.

Honeycomb Link Bracelet

This is a link bracelet inspired by a beehive. The little hanging bees are the toggles. I don’t want to say I hate this bracelet, but I will admit I am displeased with it. I think it needs to be re-worked with thicker wire… maybe when I win the lottery WordPress is behaving strangely, so I can’t post more than one photo of this, but once I get things straightened out I’ll post more.

Rhinoceros Beetle pt3

Here is my finished articulated bug pendant. I’m very proud of this piece. It was one of the first pieces we finished for our first year. It’s all cold connections, which means that there was no soldering involved in this project, its all riveted together. You can also see in these pictures some of the carving-out I did on the wings with a diamond burr and some rough sand-paper. The copper has oxidized since I polished it, but I think it adds some life to the finished piece. My metals teacher is actually wearing this piece to an event tonight.

Related articles

• Rhinoceros Beetle Pt 2 (monikacorbett.wordpress.com)

Lantern Flower Brooch #2

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Here’s my second Lantern Flower brooch. This one is folded plate copper formed into the shape of the flower using form-folding techniques. The berry on the inside is a copper half-moon sweat soldered onto and domed with a piece of plate bronze, which I then soldered onto a flat piece of plate bronze to create the berry.
The tiny seed above the berry is a melted ball of silver which I drilled through, then inserted a piece of wire so I could connect to the chain, which means that the flower part of this brooch is actually reversible. If it flips one way or the other then the other side is still presentable and you can wear it whichever way you prefer. The twig part on the top is the part that actually has the pin back on it as well, so if you lean forward or to the side the flower will dangle with your movement. The twig is bronze roughed up with a file, then copper-flashed by annealing, then liver of sulphered for colour, then re-roughed up to give it more texture. The chain was a bit of scrap chain I bought.

Related articles

• Lantern Flower Brooch 1 (monikacorbett.wordpress.com)

Forged Silver Spoon

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This is a hand-forged spoon I did in class. It’s about 30 grams of silver, I think? Had some serious troubles with this one along the way, but it definitely turned out in the end.

This started out as a little pile of silver scraps. I melted them down in a crucible, then poured them into a mould. It took a few tries, but I wound up with two good little silver ingots. Then I hammered them out until they were the length I was looking for and I started to widen the bowl, That was where the biggest issue came from: the spoon developed a crack! (disaster!) I tried dropping in a little blob of solder to close it up and I kept working at it, but the spoon was having none of it and I wound up sawing off a huge chunk of the bowl, which I then had to re-forge. I think I salvaged it pretty well in the end, though. I’m happy with this, even though I don’t particularly like looking at these photos because all I can see it the flaws.

Lantern Flower Brooch 1

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This brooch is based on a lantern flower – as you can see, I’ve included a few in the photos as a reference. It’s a pierced piece of plate bronze (or dixgold, if you want o get technical) with a circle of plate copper carefully soldered to the back and a silver pinback.

This took forever, but I think the most challenging part was putting on the pinbacks. It took a few tries due to the shape of the piece (ie, figuring out where to drop the solder with such a tiny space to work with, drop it on the wrong side of the pinback and that mofo will never latch again.) The first time I got the pin back soldered on properly I put the pin in and suddenly realized that the space between the elbow and the latch was too far and the pin wouldn’t close. The next time I put the pinback on upside down. Then the elbow on backwards. Then the elbow melted partially. Then I put it on backwards again – those things are so fiddly. As a contrast, my second brooch (entry to come) the pin backs went on easy the first time and worked right away, but the pin was misshapen and I had to cut off the pinback in order to rivet it closed. (argh!)

Anyway, all that fuss aside, I am very happy with the way this turned out. I wore it around all last weekend and it is very striking .

 

Jenna’s Sister’s Boss’ Dog.

This is Jenna’s sister’s boss’ dog.

 

I don’t know anything about it, hahaha. It’s a dog. They are very attached to it, I guess. I painted this ornament for her to give to them for christmas. It’s acrylic paints on a glass bulb. I don’t know how they felt about it, but i hope they liked it

 

Companion cube

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Another cross-stitch project. This one is the weighted companion cube from Portal, which, for the uninitiated is a video game where you play around with the laws of physics to solve various dangerous puzzles. I was playing around with the pixels as stitches, but this game had much more advanced graphics, so it was quite different. I didn’t use any pre-deigned font for this, I just kind of made it up on my own. I’d really like to frame this, but I’m a bit of a procrastinator so it hasn’t happened yet.

If I were to do this again, I would probably split the embroidery floss into smaller strands, as the cube is very thick and looks a little heavy to me.

Rhinoceros Beetle Pt 2

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So here’s a view of my rhinoceros beetle pendant pre-cleanup and assembly. It’s also missing it’s wing covering on it’s back. The wings here are cut out of plate, and the legs are very thin pieces of plate twisted where the joints are to illustrate the way a real bug’s legs would be articulated.  I also did some detail work on the wings which involved several hours of sitting with a hand-drill basically carving out a form I wanted. you can’t see it on the wings here, but it will be evident when I post a finished shot.

Mara leaning

A drawing I did for a currently defunct webcomic I was working on with my roommate at the time. I think she might be still working with her character, but mine’s kind of sitting unused. I really should try to use her in something, but she was such a perfect complement to the other character that she almost feels little hollow alone.. which probably means she isn’t a very good character.