Well, actually it’s my second attempt. The first time I put a bit of red on Art Clay Copper I was stunned at how dark and ugly it was! I had never enameled on copper of any kind, so I had no sense of how the colors would look.

My neighbor’s mango tree sheds leaves and baby mangoes all over my front yard, and I’m fascinated by the colors they go through as they age. We don’t have a real autumn here in Hawaii; no colored leaves on the trees! But some kinds of leaves do go through colors after they fall off the trees, others just go brown. I thought I might be able to capture some of these
colors on copper clay. I had intended the inside of the curved leaves to be the “front”, but the colors showed up better and with more iridescence on the outside curve. I had also hoped to get a sort of torch-fired effect, and I did, even though these are kiln fired.

As with silver clay, preparation of the fired surface before firing is important. I followed the advice of Pam East in the Metal Clay Gallery Yahoo group. It worked well!

My photography needs work, but you can begin to see the iridescence of the Thompson unleaded enamels on the copper clay. Now I need to make them into a proper necklace.

Aloha, Tina