Linda's Magic Workshop - Linda Britt Design

My first ever ‘Do Over Challenge’ was such fun!  I signed up to participate in Jeannie K Dukic ’s 6th Do Over Challenge not really knowing anything about how it worked.  I received a necklace that was very sweet with copper wire connections and pinkish pearls.  It sat on my work space for a couple of weeks while I pondered my next move.  One day I opened my polymer bead collection and was drawn to the pinkish and green beads.  They really looked good with the pearls.  I found some green crystal beads and a few other contenders.  But when I tried the small striped beads, I knew my combination!  This is the finished product for most of the pearls in the original necklace. It was the week to finish some of my long term projects.  I kept the wires with the red and green rubber bands from the braces I wore for 3 years.  When they finally came off, I asked the orthodontist if I could have them.  He wanted to know why since almost NO ONE wanted them and I told him I wante

A week ago I posted in Face Book that I had finished several pair of earrings made from Hadar’s clay.  I was experimenting with techniques from her book, The Handbook of Metal Clay Textures and Form, and I promised to share my experience with you.  The larger oval pair of earrings (lower left in photo) combines Brilliant Bronze and Copper.  I carved curvy stripes in the copper oval and laid in snakes of bronze, sanded flat and fired.  I know I could polish and make them smoother and shinier but I like the more rustic look.  I used Baldwin’s Patina to bring out the color contrast. The upper right pair of earrings also combines the bronze and copper.  The back textured layer is bronze and the smaller rectangle is copper.  I was concerned that the copper might be too thick and not bond well but as you can see – no problem! The earring on the lower right also has a backing of bronze.  I carved horizontal strips and laid the copper snakes in.  Then a textured the snakes cut

Sharing my work from Hadar’s class with you is making me remember and document what I learned.   It’s a really good thing!   Details can be so easily forgotten.   In between assigned projects, I made a pair of earrings from a slab of copper and a slab of brilliant bronze.   When you really look the top layer of one earring is plain copper and the back layer of the other is textured bronze.   The pieces on the top layer started out as a single shape and I cut them to look like cracked mud.   (At least that is what dried cracked mud looks like here in the Southwest).   Since the two materials have a slightly different shrinkage rate the cracks became a little wider.   After I sanded and fired them, I polished them and made them into earrings.   These were fun and I’ll make other earrings in a similar style.   I also tried my square pliers and love what I can do with them. This pair of earrings sold before I could get them in my etsy shop!

My newest tools have been on the floor long enough!   The doming kit and the Swantrom Disc Cutter Set were getting dusty and I was getting anxious to try them out.   Out of the box and unwrapped! Swantrom Disc Cutter Set Remember my trip to the junk yard in a previous blog?   My friend, Kim, and I divided the scrap metal and the wire and it too was sitting on the floor.   Right!   I could hardly walk to the work bench. I had a couple of polymer clay discs ready for something and I liked the blue copper (someone’s failed etching project) from the junk yard.   So I took the disc cutter and tried it out.   After a couple of tries with the mallet, I had a disc.   Wow! It works!   And a second disc and tiny holes in each of those. I was careful to leave enough blue copper around the holes I cut so that I could use the leftover for another project I have in mind. Next the doming kit…not as easy.   In fact, I watched a Beaducation video on YouTube about using it and I will prac