Polka Dot Hat Baby

Here are the brooch and pendent I made using the collage of my recent IF entry. I took a really quick photo this morning... It's not the best shot because I was freezing outside and the camera battery was dying. But you get the idea. By the way, I finally got a flickr account and I am posting from there, so it might look a little different (I noticed the image is bigger)...

PS: Do you see the thick layer of leaves on the ground? I don't even want to think about picking them up later... I get so much leaves every year from my 7 huge old trees and my neighbors' trees; it's insane.

More soldering experiment

Today I took a much needed day off from work so I made two more brooches and a pendent. This time I used handmade images instead of computer print-outs. Do you think they work better with the rustic black metal?

Finishing touch

This morning I woke up with an idea to dress up my soldered Fall Fairy pin a little further so it would look more finished. (I got so excited, I didn't even wash my face yet...) I cut a piece of felt and glue it to the back of the pin and it hides all the messiness of the backside. And I really like the look of rusty black metal against the soft wool, plus it shows the pin better against black fabrics since I am almost always wearing black. Ah... I am happy and I can go brush now!

I love black patina...

I've been so busy at work and I am just really tired everyday after I get home. But I'd still like to do a little soldering experiment when I have time. I got a big bottle of black patina solution and tried it on the stuff I made. I love it!!! It gives the piece a nice dark antique black finish (which doesn't really show well in the photo; it's actually not as shiny as it appears to be). To me, the black finish has more personalities and charms than silver. But I am still facing another problem... when I use images printed out from a color laser printer, some of the ink get greasy and makes the art looks oily under the glass... I guess it's because the soldering iron is so hot, it made the ink re-surface to the top of the paper. I guess if I can't get it solved, I will have to do little collage art for every piece by hand (like the "Dairy Queen" in my earlier post) which I enjoy doing it anyway. But I'd love to know if there is any solution for my problem...

Another Try on Soldering

After I came back from my Sunday soldering class, I tried to do another one at home, but my brand new soldering iron just didn't want to behave for me and everything looked like a big mess. I got black goo-goo all over my iron, the solder was not melting nicely and I burned the wet sponge... I was really discouraged.

Last night I decided to give it another try. My friend at work told me how to get my iron clean and it really made a huge difference. Suddenly the solder flew nicely and everything was fine. So I made another one using one of the little collage I did during the class. I need a lot of patience and practice, but knowing that I can do it makes me feel a lot better...

Thank you all for your nice and warm comments on my posts!! They really mean a lot to me!! XO

Soldered Away

OK! I just came back from my soldering class... I didn't realize that more than half of the class was actually for making collaged images and the last 2 hours were for real soldering works, and I really only got to solder for like an hour cause we had to share tools. But I had fun and I do think taking the class is necessary (at least for me) than to learn it from book myself, and it will probably save me a lot of trail and error down the road. Even though I didn't make pretty charms like Sally Jean's (I'll never know how in the world she makes her edges so smooth), here are my very first attempt, front and back... Please don't laugh...