Learning Something New

The last four days of classes were fabulous! There's a bunch of reasons to take a class - learn a specific technique, learn a new approach, change your perspective, put some juice back in your mojo - but the best is mostly too much to hope for - when you get a great group of students and awesome teachers and you have great synergy and everyone learns and new things get discovered.

There was so much good stuff - I'm having a hard time figuring out what to focus on here!

But these past days with Jeri Warhaftig and her husband Neil - were fabulous - we covered soooo much.

Focus. Pick one thing.

Ok.

Copper foil inclusions in a lampwork bead. Somewhere, early in the process of talking about including copper foil in a bead, I had the inspiration to try embossing the copper foil using the new Sizzix/Vintaj Big Kick Machine.(Available from beadFX - but instore only.)

So we scooped up some copper foil, and headed over to the other class room where the BigKick is stored, and tried both the Embossing Plated and the Etching plates. The lightweight 40 gauge copper that we were using works beautifully - taking a nice crisp pattern from either process.



The long oval on the far right is "Etched" - it is a single, rubbery plate with the design as a series of lines - it makes a pattern that is thin, raised lines, as you can see. The long oval in the centre is using the "Emboss" - which is a folder, with two metal plates, one a reverse of the other, and it gives you a pattern that is less about lines and more about areas. The little flower is also using the Emboss plate.

So - does it hold up to being included in a bead? Can you see the pattern, or does it degrade?

Yes it does hold up! Beautifully, as a matter of fact.

And there are oodles of patterns to choose from!

Remember - you read it here first! If you were looking for justification to purchase the Big Kick machine (or any of it's siblings) - here you go.