Making Jewellery - August 2016

74 makingjewellery.com

TIPS & TECHNIQUES

Inspirational pieces

1. Copper pieces with Liver of Sulphur patina,
   Sian Hamilton p56


2. Aluminium hammered texture,
   Sian Hamilton p56


3. Celebrity style bracelet, Tansy Wilson,
   Making Jewellery issue 67


4. Stamped and textured charm,
   Debbie Kershaw, Making Jewellery issue 61


5. Take a piece of electrical tape and place it
   along the marks, then stick the whole blank to
   a steel block. You need to have a steel surface to
   punch against to get a nice clean punch. When
   the blank is stuck down, write out the words you
   want to stamp on a piece of paper. Place marks
   along the tape, spaced evenly with the number of
   letters you need for the words you have chosen.
   Remember to add a mark to allow for spaces
   between words if doing more than one word.
   The marks will be used to line up against the
   mark you put on the stamps in Step 10, so they
   are where the middle of each letter will be.


6. Starting with the fi rst letter in your word,
   pick up the punch so the arrow is facing you.


7. Place it down on the blank and gently push
   it up to the tape until you can feel the letter is
   against the edge. This can be a little tricky so
   work slowly and concentrate; the tape is not
   very thick but you can feel when the letter is
   sitting against the tape edge. Make sure your
   mark on the bottom of the stamp is aligned
   with the mark on the tape. Hold the punch low
   down with one fi nger against the steel block
   to steady the punch (you can see my fi nger
   just behind the punch in picture 15). Take a
   hammer and hit the top of the punch hard.
   You need to hit the punch only once as it will
   bounce slightly and if you hit it again you get a
   ghosting. This can take a little practice!


8. I put in this picture to show that when I
   marked out this phrase I decided to leave a
   bigger space in the middle so I could add a
   star punch afterwards. You can also see that
   the letters are not completely level. I think it’s
   pretty much impossible to get them totally
   level, but I think it adds character.


9. On an aluminium blank, the easiest way
   to bring the letters out is to add colour to
   them with permanent markers. Just colour
   over the letters making sure you get right into
   the impressions. You do need the pens to be
   permanent markers for the colour to hold.


10. To fi nish the blanks and give them a nice
    satin surface, rub over with a fi ne-grit sanding
    block. Move in one direction only for the best
    fi nish. If you are using copper and work very
    carefully, you can keep the shiny surface. It is
    very hard to do that with aluminium as it is
    such a soft metal. See page 56 for the steps to
    turn your stamped blanks in jewellery.

13 14 15

16 17 18

RESOURCES

For stamps:

impressart.com

cooksongold.com

alchemyandice.com

For blanks:

littlefreckle.co.uk

stampingblanks.co.uk

copperenamelshapes.com

missmagpiessupplies.co.uk

reflectivemetals.co.uk

For EuroPower tools:

palmermetals.co.uk

MJ96_P71-75_Blanks and Stamping SHSF.indd 74 23/06/2016 11:23