Here it is, kids! My first ever assignment as a metalsmith in training!
This first picture is of my sketch book, and the second picture is of the finished project... from my brain to you :) Our critique was today, and I turned it in today.
It was made with bronze (the "gold" metal), copper (the "pink" metal), and a little bit of sterling for the flowers and petals. Also, the tree trunk and Japanese lantern are of copper as well. The tree trunk has a hammered texture and is patina-ed with Liver of Sulfur, and the lantern is engraved and patina-ed with ammonia fumes. And the way I got the path onto the bronze was through sandblasting; I covered the sky and the path with masking tape and then sandblasted the grass, and that's how I got that effect.
Now, the whole point of this assignment was cold connecting, i.e. connecting the pieces without using any heat, which means no soldering or melting, etc. So, what we did was create our own rivets using wire (you can kind of see the rivets in the flowers, and those little "gold" dots on the lantern are rivets). First, you take the two pieces that you want to rivet together, then you tape them together so that they don't move while you're drilling them. You drill holes through both pieces for the rivets to go through (making sure that the drill bit you're using corresponds to the size of wire you're going to use to make the rivet, meaning that the bit and the wire have the same diameter). The you thread the wire through both pieces, snip the wire to the appropriate length, and file both sides of the wire flat (so that you get a nice round rivet). Then, and lastly, you hammer both sides of the rivet to flatten it out and make both ends larger than the hole you drilled. TaDa! You're pieces stay together.
And that's that... this piece was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. AND, I only broke one saw blade the entire time :) Go me :)
I'm so proud of it. I hope that you are too.
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