Torch fired enamelling, working with beads

You I love to enamel and the way I usually do that is in the kiln, but today I tried my hand at some torch  fired enamelling. I had taken a course a long time ago with Barbara Lewis and not only did I get online video lessons but she also sent across a a lot of colours, stamped and plain copper blanks, beads,  & other accessories like decals ( these are printed designs that can be fired directly onto the enamel colours, these can also be words & pictures) , cats Whiskers ( thin strands of enamel colours Thracian be fired donto the last layer of enamel. 

For a long time I didn't do anything with them but recently I put together a box of all unfinished projects and I found  some electro formed & enamelled leaves. 

I thought would try to us them in a design and one thing led to another I thought the enamelled beads would go very well with the leaf. So naturally I got out all my torch fired enamel stuff and before you knew it I had a huge mess of things going on.

 Torch fired enamelling s quite different from regular enamelling in that it is very spontaneous. A very basic explanation would be heat the metal dip it in colour & Fire it directly by holding it in the torch flame. Welding rods are used to hold the metal pieces in the flame. 

The above pictures you can see my success which you will be soon seeing made into Jewelry but below are a few failures, hey what's enamelling without a few goof ups : P 

 This one on the right with purple enamel is originally like the one on the left, but I clogged up the filigree work with too much enamel.

Next post will feature the Jewelry I made with these beads.