Caution, causes burns!

What a great week so far,  on Monday I held a workshop called Stamping a new Dimension. This was a real fun day using dimensional paintable mediums along with inks, acrylic paint and Ranger products to produce tags, Coasters and a steampunk box!


On Sunday I had a play with etching copper using Ferric Chloride (available from Maplins in the UK) caution needs to be used when using this product as it can cause burns, so if attempting it please follow the safety guidelines on the bottle and you will be fine.


My main aim for buying this etchant was to make a copper etched plate for the altered guitar project I am working on.
I placed a Tando Creative Cogs Group mask over the copper and sprayed with Americana Matte sealer. Once dry I placed it into a tupperware box and added the etching solution so that it just covered the surface of the copper, then left it for a couple of hours before removing it and running under cold water.


As you can see from the picture the Matte sealer protects the copper from the etchant, the unprotected copper starts to turn black and will be gently eroded. The longer you leave the copper submersed, the deeper the etch will be, I left the cogs in for two hours and it worked great!…Sorry I am not going to show you the finished plate until it is finally fixed to the guitar but here are some small copper enamelling tags I have done using the same process, except I stamped them directly with Stazon which protected the copper from the etchant….simples!


I am not sure how to finish these tags, weather to use alcohol inks, patina them or possibly enamel and distress them as pictured below.
If anyone wants to know where to get the copper blanks, drop me an email from the contact page and I will get back to you.



Finally I will leave you with a picture of some enamelled pieces from the enamelling workshop I held yesterday.



A full list of this years available workshops can be viewed here.

Have a great day

Andy