Enameling and Upcycling

I tried some enameling this week.

My son questioned the fact that I'm breaking the law (defacing coins), so I investigated a little and found this:

Section 331 of Title 18 of the United States code provides criminal penalties for anyone who fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates impairs, diminishes, falsifies, scales, or lightens any of the coins coined at the Mints of the United States. This statute means that you may be violating the law if you change the appearance of the coin and fraudulently represent it to be other than the altered coin that it is. As a matter of policy, the Mint does not promote coloring, plating or altering U.S. coinage: however, there are no sanctions against such activity absent fraudulent intent.

I think I'm okay. :-) And it's a great way of upcycling, IMO. For those who don't know, I often use pennies as a base for my enameling (see photo below).

Anyway, I may get some more colors (of enamel powder), but I definitely also need to work on technique. Heh… What I produced last night leaves me unimpressed.

I do have one bracelet I like and will list soon…



And I have a set of four (in black and red) but they are only one-hold punched so I'll have to turn that into a necklace.

But speaking of bracelets, I do wonder how hardy these are for people like me who run their bracelets into walls, doorjambs, furniture, etc while being worn. More testing will be required.

I have some cloisonné wire and might try working with that this weekend. One of the things I want to do is make more defined lines between colors.

I also need to organize a bit more so I know what some of the products I already have actually are. I know, that sounds terrible. It IS terrible. Sigh…

The cabinets were a great start… I need to get a photo and show you. Hopefully I'll have some time this weekend to get to more organizing.