Well, that last round of soldering hurt. I managed to stab myself good with a twisted and sharp point of the copper tape I tried pulling off of the glass, thinking I might be able to re-use it. No such luck. The front was cracked in half, the adhesive clearly melted solidly onto the glass. What a mess.
I decided to give it another whirl and it turned out much better. Clearly, I need to continue to practice, but at least it's not so bad. I think I can wear it if I continue to move so that it's a bit of a blur and the wobbly line of rhinestones won't be so obviously wobbly.
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| It could use another go 'round... |
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| Why does the back look better than the front? More flux, that's why! |
When I feel in a bind in terms of just NOT knowing what I'm doing, I find myself wandering the internet for help. I actually did find a couple of YouTube videos that offered good advice. One person noted that if you find yourself getting a lot of lumps and spikes in the solder, use more flux to get it flowing. Great advice! That's one thing I did much more with this version. The other video offered suggestions about adhering the paper artwork to the glass first which I don't think I'll do. I worry about how that glue will affect the paper. In the soldering class that I took, the instructor had us use a modicum of glue adhering paper to glass. I found that the heat of soldering caused a bit of condensation to appear under the glass. Maybe I need to experiment. The other tip was using a small amount of super glue on the back side of one of the glass & paper assemblies so that the two layers were truly joined together before soldering began. I can see how this would keep it together tightly so the layers don't shift while wrapping with the copper tape, but still worry about 1) condensation from the glue if not 100% dry and 2) how the glue might affect the paper in terms of staining or eventually showing through. Guess there's only one way to find out.
Just to see what was out there, I visited a number of Etsy shops that offered soldered jewelry. I don't like to bash other artist's work, but there was some stuff out that that was just not what I expected to see for sale. Was that polite enough? Then there was another artist whose work was just about flawless and quite inspiring. Clearly, it can be done! Now to figure out how. After I work at that for a while, I'm going to go back to fabric which doesn't make me bleed or sob in frustration.
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