Electroforming at Craft Alliance - Week 2

Craft Alliance is located at 6640 Delmar Blvd, St. Louis, MO 63130; 314-725-1177
Photo credit here

About a half hour before this week’s class began, I went into a mini-panic. I’d raced home to have at least 30 minutes to spend with Ruby, had absolutely no idea which “porous” item to bring in to get electroformed, and was trying desperately to ignore the rumbling in my hungry belly (sorry, baby). I resigned myself to using whatever I could find in our front yard until I saw it: the adorable fake bouquet of calla lilies I bought years ago as part of a display in my office. Would this work? It definitely met my standards of quirky and pretty, but I wasn’t sure it was something that could be properly copperized. I threw it in my backpack, grabbed some cheddar goldfish, and made it to class with about 30 seconds to spare. (Just in case, I picked up a pine cone in the Craft Alliance parking lot.)

The class began with a look at last week’s projects. They looked amazing! We got a brief math lesson on how many amps we needed to course through the rectifier based on how much space our items took up in the bath. The instructor then placed each one carefully in the electrolyte bath, hooked up the necessary wires and anodes, and turned on the machine. My baby bottle and stork decided to float rather than immerse themselves in the bath, but Jen assured me that once the process started, they would start to fall into the bath.

Insects were a popular theme.

Electrolyte bath. Yes, that is a regular cooler. Whatever works, right?

This week, our task was to use something porous, which is a bit more difficult to work with. My creative classmates brought in everything from bones to pasta to dried flowers. I was delighted that my miniature calla lilies were perfect for electroforming, and one classmate had a brilliant idea: why not make a hairpin out of it? I plucked one of the million bobby pins hidden in my hair, attached it to the bouquet, and got to work. We first coated every nook and cranny of our piece with a protective sealant. Once that dried, we put on 2 coats of the copper paint. As you can see, my calla lilies looked pretty frickin’ cool:

How did it turn out after being electroformed? Stay tuned. . .I’ve got one recap left, and I’ll be live tweeting during the final class.

Oh, and in case you're wondering about my rumbling belly, the goldfish didn't cut it. I made a pit stop at White Castle on the way home. I got a veggie burger, so cut me some slack. (It was strange, but decent.) Baby #2 won't get any more White Castle again for several years. Right? We'll go with that. I mean, Pizza Hut is so much healthier anyway.

St. Louis friends, do you want to take a jewelry-making or some other incredibly crafty course? Check out the Craft Alliance web site and stay in the loop by following them on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

P.S. Thanks, ALIVE Influencer Network and Craft Alliance for helping me realize my jewelry-designer dreams!

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