Experimenting With Liquid Enamel

 Something that's been on my to-do list for a while now is trying liquid enamel. I had a few weeks "break" over Christmas {not really a break as I was making new stuff!} so at long last I got round to ordering some of the liquid enamel powders. I got a few basic colours and a white so I could mix different shades. I also bought a white crackle base powder to experiment with.

I mixed up the colours with distilled water in totally unsuitable containers - too tall and thin and I've since bought some wider pots - and started painting. I applied the liquid enamels to a base of cream opaque and on two of the pieces I fired a layer of white crackle base before applying the liquid enamel.

Lumps in the enamel means I didn't mix properly!

Once I'd finished painting I set the copper pieces onto a warmed soldering block to speed up drying. When they were dry I started scratching designs {I use that word in the loosest possible context} into the dried enamel using a wooden skewer.

I then fired them using a torch. In my excitement I forgot which two had the crackle base. The effect you should get when you apply a liquid enamel on top of a crackle base and then fire it is the crackle base pushing through the top layer and creating a cracked effect but as you can see it didn't work very well on the two pieces I tried it with.

I did get the start of a crackled effect on the bottom corners of this piece but I did read it needs a larger area, in other words a bigger piece of copper, to work properly.

I liked the effect mixing the white liquid enamel powder with the other colours gave - a kind of speckled effect which reminds me of ceramic glazes. The "straight" colours with no white added came out a bit patchy in comparison but that may be because I got the mix too runny.

I then etched them all for a matt finish.

I still have work to do but it's a fun thing to try. I think it works better when you go with the flow rather than try to be too exact and it seems you can get different results with the colours depending on how long you fire them for - the oranges I mixed came out a bit on the pink side the first time I tried them then more orange the second time....

I did make a few pairs for sale but I feel the need for more practicing {and some more colours!} ☺