New Beadwoven Necklace, featuring my Aluminum and Felt Pendant

One of the things on my (mile-long) To Do list is to create necklaces from my many handmade pendants. For this piece, I chose the aluminum and felt pendant I made last Spring, using a remnant of felt from my felted vessel:

aluminum and upcycled felt pendant

felted vessel

I love the blue and burgundy in the felt, and wanted to pull these colors into the necklace. I decided to weave what I call a "skinny spiral", using an 11/0 seed bead as the core. I used burgundy firepolish ovals, 3mm Swarovski crystals, and a mix of burgundy, purple, and blue seed beads to create the rope, adding 6mm dumortierite rounds at intervals:

Handwoven Blue and Burgundy Dumortierite Necklace with Aluminum and Felt Pendant

This necklace is available in my Etsy shop, and so are the matching earrings:

Dumortierite, Swarovski crystal, and sterling silver earrings

Etching Aluminum with Ferric Chloride

I like aluminum as an inexpensive alternative to sterling silver in my Cold Connections pieces,  but have been disappointed in its utility - I already discovered that it won't take liver of sulfur (LOS), after I had textured a piece of aluminum with one of my texture hammers, and wanted to emphasize the texture with LOS:

Aluminum Sari Ribbon Corset Cuff

The circle in the pic above shows the texture I created with my texture hammer: when I ran this piece of aluminum through the LOS, the LOS just pooled and ran off the aluminum like water off a duck's back. Very disappointing!

But I still love the cuff - and it's available on Etsy!

I forgot all about this LOS-aluminum incompatibility when I tried stamping an aluminum piece -

stamped aluminum

After stamping this piece of aluminum, I placed it in the LOS, having forgotten my previous experience. Needless to say, the same thing happened. Without the LOS, the stamping was hardly visible at all - I used another method to darken the stamped impression of each letter, and then sealed the patina with Krylon.

So - I can't really texture the aluminum with hammers, nor stamp it.

Now, I admit I hadn't thought this through all the way, but I decided to see if I could etch a design in the aluminum with ferric chloride.

I cut out 2 heart shapes, sanded, filed, and cleaned them, and then stamped a heart design on each with Staz-On.

Then I placed the hearts in the ferric chloride bath.

When I etch copper in ferric chloride, I leave in it for 90 minutes. So, I turned around, and grabbed an egg timer from the shelf to set for 90 minutes, because I have a habit of forgetting things (I get distracted by other bright shiny objects!).

Thank goodness I didn't leave the room! No sooner had I turned around (my hand wasn't even on the egg timer yet) when I heard an out-of-place fizzing, like someone had poured a glass of champagne, and was holding it up to my ear.

Hmmm ... I thought.

And I turned around; all the while the fizzing was getting louder.

I looked at the ferric chloride, and it was bubbling and frothing like a rabid dog. This is NOT what happens when I etch copper - it just lies there, soaking in its brown acid bath.

I figured I better take the aluminum out of there, since something was clearly wrong - and my hands were a good 2 feet away, if not more, when I became aware of the heat coming from the acid container. And it just got hotter and more fizzy as I got closer. I grabbed the pieces of packing tape that supported the aluminum in the acid (these edges were well-away from the fizzing action, so I wasn't worried about burning myself) but there was tremendous heat coming from that acid container!

As soon as I had raised the pieces above the level of the acid, the fizzing stopped and the temperature returned to normal.

Those of you with chemistry backgrounds say it with me: That was an EXOTHERMIC reaction.

Wow.

And here are the 2 pieces that were in there: (they were black, black, BLACK)when they came out, but after a LOT of scrubbing with steel wool, this is what they look like:

etched aluminum hearts

There is a bit of design; more on the left than on the right. And what you see here is not very deep - you can feel it, but not very well. And that grayish-brown stain in the middle of both of them? Won't come off.

And now that I've thought it through, these designs would have needed LOS to really show, anyway - so maybe not being able to etch aluminum isn't something I need to mourn.

I've heard that aluminum takes alcohol inks really well - so there are still other avenues I can explore with it!

I Upcycled the Lid from my Felted Vessel to make this Pendant

Shiny aluminum pendant with upcycled felt in the window. Peek-a-boo!

Remember my felted vessel?

 embellished felted vessel

I had a 4 inch circle of felt leftover after I cut the lid in the vessel, and I've been hoarding it. I had no idea what to do with it, but I worked VERY hard to make it, and I couldn't just throw it away!

Finally, while teaching the Cold Connections Workshop last week, it hit me: work it into a piece of metal jewelry, somehow. That's about as fully formed as the inspiration was when it occurred to me, but after playing around for awhile, this is what I came up with.

Shiny aluminum pendant with upcycled felt window

I loved the blues and reds in the felt, and I just really thought they looked better with silver than with copper. Using silver metal creates a couple of problems I'm still trying to overcome - sterling is awfully expensive, so I'd rather not use it. Aluminum is fairly inexpensive, but it won't etch (more on that later this week), and it won't take liver of sulfur patina. So, while I could easily texture the aluminum with hammers, or stamp on it, I still couldn't accentuate the texturing/stamping with LOS, so it really wouldn't show up very well.

So, if I was going to use aluminum, it was going to untextured - and I decided if it was going to be shiny, it was going to be REALLY shiny, so I tumbled it (before the felt was added), and after the whole pendant was finished it, I polished it with the Dremel and the radial discs, so this pendant has a brilliant mirror finish. So shiny that my camera lens is visible in almost every single pic. How do professional photographers get around obstacles like this? Beats me.

After cutting and prepping the aluminum, I used my disc cutter to cut the circle in the front piece of aluminum. I put the 2 pieces together, with the felt in the middle, and grommeted the stack together with matching blue grommets.

The back of the shiny aluminum pendant, reflecting my camera lens nicely! :(

 It's available in my Etsy shop!

I have more blue felt leftover, so I plan to make more jewelry with it - just need to figure out some more ways to incorporate the felt. After all, this window design is so last week, literally (LOL!)

Copper and Aluminum Earrings

Another project I started during our metal studio day earlier this week, and finished a couple of days later:

These earrings combine sheet aluminum that I textured with a smaller piece of sheet copper. Very simple and lightweight.

For some reason, these earrings are very difficult to photograph - wish I understood why! In every photo I took except the one above, it looks like I only textured one of the earrings:

Odd.