Enamel

Look what we made:

When I was a kid, my parents used to play around with enamel. Which is not surprising - there isn´t much in the craft sector my parents didn´t try.
However, enamel was something they never let me participate, since you need a) a super hot oven for it, and b) stinky chemical stuff. So they didn´t let me.

I had forgotten all about this until last week, when I happened to find cold enamel powder in the craft store.
Cold enamel! How awesome! You don´t need a fancy oven that heats up to 700 degree celsius, but can just take your standard oven! And because of that, you can apparently not only work with metal, but also use wood or even thick cardboard - whatever comes to your mind.

However, to get started, I purchased a little sack with copper shapes:

They were around 5 Euro for the whole package, so we had something to try. The cold enamel was two Euro a bottle each, and we got five bottles. But we still have plenty left after all the shapes we colored, so I consider it a good investement.

You can apply the powder either with a brush:

...or by just gently tapping on the little bottle-thing:

We used the coasters because that made it a lot easier to lift the whole thing into the oven without spilling too much of the powder, but I´ve also seen people use pliers. Since I worked with my kids, beer coasters were easier than pliers.

You need to preheat your oven to approx. 130 degree celsius. Then all it takes is carrying your piece of art into the oven, and leave it there for 5 minutes, until the poweder melts.

With the cherry on the pic above, Eva applied her two colors carefully before melitng them. Her final result looked like this:

You can also apply one layer, melt it, apply the next, and take a pin or a needle to achieve a marbling effect, like we did with these two:

If you really want to, you could even add glitter, like we did for this broche:

And yes, I know that glitter counts as the herpes of craft world... but it was also a way to cover up our marble-experiment-gone-wrong :)

So: It was easy, still on the cheap side, nobody got burned, the kitchen didn´t smell the slightest bit, and we can now ponder about furure possibilities: Enameled spoon bracelets? Modified soda cans`Or could we use this for cards? We´ll find out, and we might keep you updated!

Music:
Apparently I´m in my piano phase.
After Brian Crain and Brd Mehldau, I´m now enjoying the music of Ludovico Einaudi (what a name!!!), so, if you feel like leaving this window open and having some sweet, totally non-jazzy and very easy-on-the-ears piano piece in the background, go ahead: