I took this photo of a recovered UFO when I was in the U.S. Army.
I use several kinds of metal in my embossing studio — copper, brass and other. The “Other” is a strange brand of aluminum coated with some sort of gold-like stuff, with aluminum on the back — which is easy enough to overcome in a piece of jewelry.
The aluminum sheet is easy to emboss, no struggle whatever, but I can’t say as much for the copper, which is very hard to manage, and the brass, hardest of all.
The thing is, if you want to make a sturdy set of wind chime earrings, you’ve got to use brass — copper just won’t do, it’s too doggone soft. On the other hand, just try embossing copper and see how soft it is — the answer is “not very”. Copper looks amazing, and so does the brass, but they don’t take detail like the coated aluminum sheet does. Continue reading →
If they’re cheap enough, earrings can be bought at the rate of a pair a day, and some folks will do exactly that — buy a pair a day or more. With Gender Fluidity becoming all the rage among youngsters, there’s a good chance that everyone will have piercings galore, which indicates that there will be more than enough piercings on the average teenage body to accommodate dozens of earrings at a time, so don’t stop at the ears!
With my Teeny Copper and Teeny Brass Earring Kits, you can make thousands of earrings an hour, and they’re so cheap, quick and easy to make! Okay, maybe not THOUSANDS of earrings an hour, but certainly dozens.
Actually, the earrings will cost on the average of less than a dollar to make, and for another half a buck, you can successfully and wonderfully package them for easy retail sales.
Yes, I said “easy sale”, because there’s nothing easier than selling someone their own name or their Zodiac sign or their pet’s name etched in copper or brass, and that’s just the NAME variety of earrings or medallions — but there are so many more things you can do with this amazing medium, beyond just names and Zodiac signs.
You see, a craft circle is a CRAFT circle, meaning that the folks are engaged in learning how to make a special and very unusual handmade item in a Paleo way. Continue reading →
Bike Wheels & Crutches, sculpture by ej gold Otis Gallery, 1967.
It was Archimedes who said, “Give me a fulcrum and a place to stand, and I will move the Earth”, but everybody focused on the fulcrum instead of the place to stand, which was a big mistake that hasn’t been corrected since the Empire fell — you know which one I mean.
All of them. They all fall down & go boom after a while, just as every dominant species gives way to a new adaptation sooner or later, and in the case of organic life, it’s generally sooner rather than later.
A fulcrum is something steady, something that doesn’t move, and that allows a lever to be applied in order to reduce the amount of torque you need to apply in order to move the targeted heavy thing, such as a giant rock or a planet.
A lever allows you to place the fulcrum so that the amount of force needed is no more than you’d want to put in, taking into account how long it might take to move the thing, meaning that there must be a balance achieved between the fulcrum and the lever handle.
Gosh, it sounds so complicated, but one simple hands-on demo would show you what I mean. The closer the fulcrum point is to the object, the easier it will be to move it with the lever, while the farther away it is, the wider the movement of the object for the given force … oh, heck, I’ll do a demo in the upcoming workshop to show you how it works — most folks never inquire or discover anything about fulcrums and levers, so you might find it interesting and educational.
Keep in mind, however, that the lever and fulcrum are the least important in the scheme of things — it’s “a place to stand” that really makes the difference, and that goes double for sales and marketing, and that goes triple for promotions that introduce work ideas to the public. Continue reading →
Can you pick me out in photo? Craft Session at Camp Woodland, August 25, 1955. You can order the book “Downtown Community School” from Gateways Books & Tapes.
Kids had such a transformative experience working with adults in the Craft Classes at Camp Woodland and Downtown Community School under the direction of Norman Studer during the 1950s, and when families worked together on simple craft projects and craft shows, it was like a bunch of gluons had suddenly bonded the family members into a blended and harmonious unity, and that’s exactly what’s needed in this world of pain.
I’m designing an entire LINE of metal-embossing kits, and I’ll tell you why — the new EK cutter is a piece of crap, although it does admittedly do the job, but it does it with four massive crimps in the sides, which eventually will roll out with pressure and persistence, but the additional effort makes the thing too time-expensive for the marketplace.
So I decided to set up a craft supply “factory” where I either make or encourage and teach others to make little circular foil bits for sale to embossers everywhere.
We’re making embossings that can actually be used in jewelry mountings, because our sizes correspond to the mountings without modification. We’re among the very few who make embossings on round foil disks. Continue reading →
This ceramic design can easily be translated into embossed metal.
Gosh, I would never have believed it, but to my total surprise, PEOPLE’S NAMES are the most popular of any object, jewelry or otherwise, that I make or have ever made. A close “second place” to people’s names is — can you believe it ?? — DOG & CAT NAMES. I am flabbergasted.
If you’re not at all surprised, you’re one of the very few who actually understands what’s going on here, and you might be in a position to market to the few like yourself who don’t want any part of the local sex, drugs, rock n’ roll scene that permeates planet Earth while humans are temporarily in control.
So how can writing people’s, or a dog’s, a cat’s, a horse’s, a pig’s or a parakeet’s name on metal foil help you locate other potential workers for The Work who, like yourself, don’t related to, or belong to, the local robot population???
It’s not hard to attract off-worlders and higher plane inhabitants to your FREEHAND PSYCHEDELIC LETTERING NAME TAG booth, where you make handcrafted freehand-drawn embossed metal nametags encased in stunning acrylic capsules that comes to the customer in a gift presentation, making it the perfect stocking-stuffer or corporate party favor and, for only ten bucks, it beats most other corporate gifts by a long shot. Continue reading →
This Dinosaur Skull is my “take” on T-Rex, but it could just as easily be read as a super closeup of a brontosaurus feeding on the top of a tree — it’s all in the label, in this case, but you could get very good at reducing the elements of a meat-eater predator as opposed to a leaf or branch browser.
Of course, ANY animal will work here, alive or dead, currently in stock or extinct.
You’ll want to sharpen your skills at shapes. Note that the teeth are long and sharp, and very exaggerated, as are the double-circled eyes, bulging out from the top of the skull.
I like to sign these opposite the majority of the “weight”, so in this case, I signed it on the eastern side of the rim, meaning the right side of the image. Continue reading →
My Extra-Terrestrial Alien UFO Flying Saucer Spacecraft is typical of the smaller “Scout Ship” types you see around New Mexico and Arizona. They are piloted by greys, but the larger, flatter steel-gray crafts are from Orion and Sirius.
Of course, there are also trans-dimensionals and trans-time voyagers, plus thousands of species of reptilian and several worldsful of Arcturan visitors.
I’m including this little videoclip in the blog format, in order to underline the fact that I’m not a wild-eyed alien freak, or at least I’m among a growing number of former high ranking government and agency people who are finally starting to talk about the many visitors to Planet Earth, among whom are Canadian Minister of Defence Paul Hellyer, who testified before Parliament that there are more than 80 known species of aliens and that humans are in contact with at least four, and that this is being covered up by an international Cartel that hopes to take over the world with alien technology and with them as rulers. Continue reading →
Pueblo in the Sky looks easy, but offers some serious challenges.
My style of embossing is free-hand and free-style. Unless illustrating by example some technique or interesting embossing tool, I use only one very basic tool — a very tiny ball-tipped embossing stylus, and that’s about it.
Once in a while, I’ll use the nylon tip on the other end of my basic tool to make a larger dip in the metal from the back side, but other than that, it’s just one tool and the movement of my hands and fingertips.
You can’t just “straight draw” on metal, even foil. It doesn’t LIKE to be pushed around, and it will fight you and make you go crinkly and lumpy and weird.
Curved lines are the bane of every engraver. Spend a few hours mastering it before you screw up hundreds of pieces that COULD have worked, had you taken the time to discover how to make curved lines work in metal foil.
If you’re working in the thicker material, you’ll have to find your own way. It’s not easy to work that stuff, and anything thicker than .36 gauge will probably defeat any beginner, although there’s always beginner’s luck.
“Pueblo in the Sky”, illustrated above, uses straight lines against curves to achieve its effect. You start by drawing in the sidewalks, then add the building on the right, starting with the left top and working your way toward the doorway, actually a triple arch, if you’ll take notice. The dots on the sidewalk can also be circles or squares, to add to the illusion of depth.
Straight lines are easy to emboss free-hand on foil. They will tend to look exactly the same as your drawings on paper. As a matter of fact, even your sculptures and ceramics will reflect your drawing skills or lack of them.
If you’re not very good at drawing, try some of my art books on the subject. I can help anyone learn to draw, even if they can’t even draw a stick-figure. Continue reading →
“Country Road Along Canal, Amsterdam 1645” comes out differently every time.
I’ve given my sources for my metal embossing projects, so that you can bring your prices down, down, down, to the level where there’s some profit in it and it’s worth your while to devote time, energy and talent to the thing.
But what if you DON’T intend to quit the day job and sell your embossed metal artwork to thousands of satisfied customers??? What if you don’t intend to order and await shipments of industrial foil, huge cartons of coin-flips and enormous quantities of sales tags? For you, there is a VERY good answer.
I make kits that are attuned to specific projects. You get all the materials and supplies you need to make 21 finished disks mounted in “flip” coin-frames for sale — that’s one to wear in a bezel or carry as a pocket-pal or purse-pal in an acrylic capsule, if you decide to use those items.
ALL MY DESIGNS COME IN ONLY ONE SIZE, made especially for the dollar-sized disk & bezel. You can re-size them as you wish. You will do better by just sort of roughly and generally copying the lines rather than trying to trace them, but some folks won’t have it any other way, so for them, you’ll have to shrink the thing down on photoshop and print it out on a TRANSFER paper, I suppose.
If you work this system rightly, you’ll develop your own “iconographics” and get them into the metal form. The whole point here is to utilize “reductionism” in order to simplify the form, as Cangialosi would have said it. You can also understand the concept in the following Matisse-ian way:
“EXPRESS THE SUBJECT WITH THE FEWEST POSSIBLE LINES.” Continue reading →
Handmade Metal Embossings by Local Artisan! Only $3 bucks apiece!!! Look Here!
“Hi, I need some cash fast, and I’m on the street selling these things for which I usually ask fifty bucks, but like I said, I need some cash, so I’m selling them for only $3 bucks apiece, metal ebmossings mounted in a coin flip, like you see here. Can you help me out? How many would you like?”
Metal Embossing? It’s cheap, and it’s a total cinch to make ’em, and a total cinch to sell ’em, when you know a few tricks of the trade. Metal embossing is a terrific way for a new artist of ANY age and persuasion to get out there with their artwork, and it’s a great way to get your art into multimedia without a lot of fuss and horrible expenses.
For an established artist, it’s a no-brainer. It puts your art into an affordable category for an original work of art. Usually it’ll be a signed and numbered multiple, which this isn’t. It’s a total original, and an established artist can ask the moon for these things.
Doubt it? Imagine what the price would be for a coin-sized embossed metal piece if you could PROVE that it was made and signed by Picasso? How about Rosenquist, or Lichtenstein, or Warhol, or Basquiat?
