Designing Jewelry with Copper

I’m going to attempt to knock your socks off. We all think of copper as that shiny pinkish-orange wire. But it can be so much more! Copper is versatile, easily manipulated and has great potential to be what you wish it to be: unique to your own designs.

Who could argue?

Copper in its raw form is beautiful. It is the oldest known metal dating back to approximately 8700 BC where a copper pendant was discovered in what we now know as northern Iraq. There’s tons of copper in American history. Paul Revere was an early American coppersmith. Columbus sailed to America in his 3 famous ships that were partially made of copper. Miss Liberty herself is 179,000 pounds of copper gorgeousness.

Its basic form

What I love about copper in its original form is that you can polish it to the most brilliant shine! The stuff just bursts with bling. And the color, which is considered red by mineral enthusiasts, is a fantastic contrast with turquoise or lapis or blends well with jaspers or agates. I love it with pearls, particularly.

Want to change it up???

Give copper a whole new appearance by taking a torch to it. No kidding! Prep your copper by using a wire brush on it. You can use a hand held wire brush, or if you have a small drill like a Dremmel with a wire brush bit then you can do it quickly and evenly. The quality of color that you get will depend on the brushing, so take your time and do it evenly and completely. Scratching the surface slightly in different directions is necessary to get the effect you want.

Let the rainbows begin!

Using a small hand held torch, hold the flame over your copper sheet or wire and watch the rainbows of color appear! All you need is a butane torch. You can find hand held torches at hardware stores, and while you’re picking that up make sure you also pick up some safety goggles to protect your eyes. Over a non-flammable surface in a well ventilated area, simply lay the copper on a flat surface and hold the torch flame against the copper sheet, moving it around. The longer you hold the torch in one place, the more the colors will change, and you’ll get different effects depending on where you hold the metal in the flame.  The colors will change for a small amount of time even when you remove the torch from the metal. You can do copper wire also, but use either pliers to hold it or lay it on your non-flammable surface so you don’t burn your hands or fingers. The colors will emerge in a fantastic spectrum of blues, reds and greens! 

Not happy with what you see?

Copper is pretty friendly. Take a wire brush to it again, and then put it back in the flame. You’ll eventually end up with a lovely, organic pattern of colors that you’ll be happy with. The truth is that when you use different tips on the torch, or different exposure to the flame you’ll get different results. So practice, practice, practice and then practice some more.

Patina

The distinctive green color of aged copper is called 'verdigris', and if you look again at the Statue of Liberty you know just what it looks like. You can find other patina colors, from a gray-black to the rainbow we described above. Copper is friendly with chemicals that speed up the patina process such as liver of sulfur or Silver Black. What if you don’t like the patina?? Then you can bring it back to its original beautiful state by scrubbing it with ketchup. Yes, I said ketchup. The acid will take the patina right off.   

Found object copper

My husband is an electrician and often has to enter demolished areas to install new electrical stuff. The blessing in this is that he often encounters wire that’s sometimes re-usable (gentle on the wallet) and sometimes recyclable. I love the latter since that means he’s home stripping the plastic casing off it and bundling it in little piles. I admit I steal it. Just a bit. This wire is not like craft or jewelry wire. Its slightly darker in color and will sometimes have dull spots or spots that are slightly rough. I just snip those areas away.

Be brave!

Stray away from silver for a change. Jump into copper and you’ll explore a whole new are worth spending time in!

"I think we all came into this world with a bag of tools. Some want to open it up and see what's inside. Others never want to know. I challenge my students to be brave, fresh, bold. I tell them: unedit your thinking. Let yourself have an authentic experience."  ~Lynne Merhant, wire and metal genius

References worth checking out!

http://www.desertusa.com/mag98/july/papr/geo_copper.html