I hear it all the time: I love your stuff at http://www.bsueboutiques.com And, I love to make jewelry. But WHAT do you do with brass stampings?
Brass stampings are one of the MOST VERSATILE jewelry crafting components on today's market!
It seems so many people these days are knee-deep into beading, which is great---because it's a leg up to using a stamping. Beads can be incorporated into designs using stampings very EASILY. Use them to turn a stamping into a pendant, for example, or combine with a cool stamped drop and make bodacious chandelier earrings. Manipulate brass stamped filigree to combine with your beads. Check out all our strandage bars sold on this site.....these are made from guilding weight brass, which is flat and filled in on the back, with the design on top.
Other charms are hollow, or bumped up on the back. They are just as easily incorporated into your work (and these are the kind that make great molds, too!)
Still.... sometimes those who have only worked with say, wire, polymer clay, or beads, look at these beautiful components and just don't 'get it' right away! Even some who have worked with junk metal, sawing out their own shapes and making bezels out of old pipe, or repurposing broken vintage jewelry, don't understand.
That's OKAY....that's why I'm writing this guide. ;-) Let me explain and give you some cool ideas.
First of all....don't confuse a brass stamping with the rubber stamps used in scrapbooking. The rubber stamps in scrapbooking, of course, make an image. Brass stampings ARE an image. They are made from a die (machinery) that is struck under very high pressure into sheet brass. (BUT....clever artist designers have indeed found that you can make some awesome molds from dimensional brass stampings! One product that can help you to do this is called Mold and Pour, made by Ranger for Suze Weinberg. Look for this product on our website by the end of September 2009).
The dies that make the components I use and sell have been in service for decades. If you like to scout around in flea markets and antique shops, you may even find true vintage jewelry made out of the same parts we sell. This is because they're made exactly the same way they've been made in the industry for lo these many years.
And that's another reason why they are so cool! If you want to search out just the right components, you can actually design in the manner of the famous old jewelry designers, or make reproduction Victorian jewelry, or great Bohemian, Czech-style looks.
I find brass filigree stampings particularly intriguing and useful, especially to beaders. First, I just love their intricate, lacey quality. Also, the way they are made makes them especially malleable, meaning you can form them around odd-shaped old stones for which you'll never find a mount. This look 'came back' a number of years ago and many popular artists found at Ebay, Etsy and on their own websites are making jewelry in this style. Some 'discovered' the techinique playing around with scrap findings, but it's really not a new idea, just perhaps one that had been forgotten. Back in the 50's Victorian Revival jewelry was very popular, and many of the old West German filigree jewelry is made from manipulated stampings. Going back even farther than that, you will find it in the oldest vintage Czech jewelry as well as in Victorian styles, especially European ones.
You can also bead through filigree stampings. This is called cagework. Many popular designers of the 30's-60's employed this technique and the jewelry is today extremely collectable. Some look at this style of intricate jewelry and feel it must be very difficult to make, but I'm here to tell you, it's NOT that hard! You just need the right filigree, plated 28 gauge wire, some determination and imagination. It's sort of like a puzzle that must be worked, that's all. Did you ever embroider a piece of fabric? Well, you can also look at cagework beadery as a coarse form of embroidery. Simply choose small beads to work with, I don't like to use anything over 4mm, and small seed beads and pearls are even better. For an authentic look, you might also like to incorporate rose montees (little rhinestones set in a tiny pronged mount that have sewing, or beading holes on the backs).
If you make a caged piece, you will also want two pieces of the same filigree, a style that has a slight dap, or push OUTWARD to it. This is because you will work the design on one piece, and you will finish the back by mirroring the other piece to the back, and wiring it on, so you will have a nice, sleek finished look. You can then wire a pinback to it (or just glue it on, that's up to you.) Work with small wire 'stitches' and try to make them as tight and inconspicuous as possible.
One very well known artist-teacher who specializes in this style (as well as many other types of intricate beadery) is Diane Fitzgerald. Many of her teaching articles have been published in Bead and Button magazine. You will find her website at http://www.dianefitzgerald.com
Still, I feel an even greater master at this form of beadery would be Annie Navetta. She is a very prolific designer, her work is meticulous and is done in the truest vintage style. She uses the old Czech beads as opposed to the new ones as much as possible, and her work shows a great understanding of vintage style. As a great fan of Miriam Haskell jewelry, which was done in the cagework style, I truly admire Annie's combinations of color, beads and placement as I feel it is some of the most authentic work you will find besides examining some of the vintage pieces you may have in your own collection, or find in your travels. You will find Annie's website at http://www.annisoriginalartjewelry.com/ In the past, Annie has also used many of our findings at http://www.bsueboutiques.com.
We offer many different shades of plated stampings. Two of these finishes, Russian Goldplate and Silverware Silverplate, are exclusive to us. If you want to do cagework beadery, I can't recommend our Russian Goldplated material enough, no one else has a finish as authentic to the old Victorian rgp or the finish used by the mid-20th century design houses, that is as close to the real thing as ours.
Our brass ox finish with black antique is one of the best versions of antique brassplate on the market. It is not the hand-rubbed finish you hear about; it is commercially applied; but it has an extremely similar, rich, old look....and the price is more economical as well.
All of our plating finishes are applied in the US by the best costume jewelry finishers in the trade.
We can't forget, though, that there are alot of jewelry crafters who prefer raw brass stampings. This is because they like to add their own finishes, and the look becomes unique to them----they actually form their own style, work out their own recipes and come up with a look that is their own exclusive. I have really been experimenting with that, myself and it's a lot of fun. You can read a lot about making patina on brass here on this website.
Here are a few ideas:
1. After completely degreasing the piece in a bath of hot, soapy water with a good thorough rinse and dry, you can warm the piece and then dip in a bath warmed of liver of sulfur to make an oxidized look. Liver of sulfur can be obtained at most lapidary houses ( I do not sell it at this time.) After you take it out of the bath, you can 'scrub it up' with some fine steel wool if you want some texture or tooth in the finding, or clean it up with one of our Sunshine cloths (everyone loves them!) or a cloth with some brass cleaner, or run it up under a buffer to add some highlights and 'finish'.
Are you good with a torch? Sometimes some amazing results can be achieved by simply holding raw, degreased brass in flame until it is red hot, quenching in water and then playing around with it. I have not personally attempted this but I have seen it done. The flame will play to the metal content and I'm told, actually change the composition of the metal somehow to make the change in color. If you intend to patina brass by this method, it will take a level of expertise to achieve a consistant look every time, and of course, a large measure of safety if you intend to work with open flame.
2. You can skip liver of sulfur entirely and just use tripoli (a type of jeweller's rouge also obtained at lapidaries, hobby shops and some jewelry supply places) on a muslin wheel on a buffer or the buffer attachment on a Dremel tool, if you have one, and you can achieve a similar 'antiqued' look. You'll want to seal the result with either a paint-on or spray-on lacquer. (I'm cool with the triple thick aerosol lacquer you buy at the hardware store.)
Another method discussed a lot on our website is the easy vinegar/salt/oven bake method. In fact, you can find a whole gallery of items patina'd by this method (and a few others) on this site under Project Ideas at http://www.bsueboutiques.com
Some say they find this method to be transient, meaning it doesn't take or doesn't 'stay'. In response to that I would have to say, it depends on several factors:
Type of piece (fancy pieces with a lot detail work out best, flat pieces need to be sanded a little w fine wool or just fussed with more, requiring more bakes, etc)
You must degrease the piece COMPLETELY
How long you soak the piece and how many times you bake it
Did you seal the piece? A piece darkened by this method does need sealing. The best product to seal brass is RENAISSANCE WAX. We will carry this product on our site by September 25, 2009 if not sooner, and we will always have it available to customers thereafter.
In the meantime, you also can use Liquid Turtle Wax, which you can buy at the Dollar Store or Walmart. It is also a form of microcrystalline wax and will suffice. But, I much prefer Renaissance Wax.
Another way to seal that works nicely is MATTE, clear SPRAY lacquer from the hardware store. Make a tent out of a cardboard box or do it outside, the fumes are not healthy.
Don't forget: you have to seal home-patina pieces FRONT AND BACK.
3. I have seen some AMAZING results achieved with something as simple as acrylic paint you buy at the crafts store! Mix varied black and brown shades and then, paint the cleaned raw brass piece, wait about 30 seconds and then wipe off. Repeat til you get the look you like best and then seal it with lacquer (spray-on will be fine, do one light coat, let it dry well, and then do another.)
MORE IDEAS: Paint pens (I like the pearly kind, so pretty! Those work over plated brass too, so they add a really excellent look to brass ox, copper ox, and silverware silverplated finished brass).
AND!!! RANGER ALCOHOL INKS. I carry a few at the site and more very soon. Several I will not be without are:
Rust
Stone Mountain Blue
Pitch Black
Gold
Silver
And, the Tim Holtz Distress Inks that we carry on the site in the Inks section work GREAT on the fancy stampings that have a lot of highs and lows, to add amazing highlights. I like Tea Dye the best. ;-)
4. You can actually SPRAY PAINT the parts to make it look like old 60's cold paint enamel (it won't be an exact vintage look, but it will be close, and look great, if that's the look you like). Be sure you do this with GOOD ventilation, however! Make a tent out of a cardboard box and use a respirator if possible, or do it outside on a nice clear day.
5. Another thing some crafters do is HANDPAINT the pieces with acrylic paint, or use paint pens, to accent the design on the stamping, or create a little floral motif. This has been very effectively done on many of the heart-shaped charms. If you are adept with an artist's paintbrush, spectacular results may be achieved. You can even mock the look of old dresden enamel which is very rare and hard to get, anymore. Seal your completed, finished work with a resin-based lacquer.
You can also accent many of our finished, plated charms with enamels and paints, as well. My most popular finish is called brass ox. Ox means 'oxidized', as in antiqued, and our brass ox finish would be the same as antique brassplate. I love its warm, even look and I use brass ox plated stampings alot, to make pretty vintage style lavaliers and earrings.
Brass stampings are always great incorporated into collage jewelry. That's how I started making jewelry! I made so much collage jewelry that I started doing shows with my pieces, which sold briskly. From there I ended up doing bunches of home parties, and then I started doing fine arts shows and eventually ended up selling wholesale through trade fairs and showrooms---we had over 500 store accounts at one time! We used little pearl buttons, bisque roses, brass stampings galore and charms in our darling little pieces and, some people even collect those old pieces to this day!
It all started with bits of this and that, and brass stampings, a love of jewelry craft and alot of determination! Anyone can do it, and you can, too! Try some brass stampings out and see where you go with it!
