A few weeks ago one of the shops that I teach at was told about an opportunity for an enameling studio. A local lady used  to do enameling and had a shop and taught lasses and everything. Well, she passed away last October due to cancer. Her children have been cleaning out the house and as any true artist can attest to, she had EVERYTHING under the sun. Well, my friend knew she wouldn't be able to buy all of it and asked if I would like to check it out as well. I went to check it out and my jaw dropped. There were copper pieces, copper dishes, copper bowls, copper switch plates, copper, copper, copper! Then there were also a few kilns. That kind of excited me. Don't k now if any of them work, but one was still in its shipping crate. Then...... there were enamels, hundreds of packets of enamels. HUNDREDS!!!!!

We talked a little about the price she wanted and whatnot. She wanted it all gone at once. So it was a "take it all, or not at all." type of deal. Well, what in the world am I going to do with all this enamel and copper? But in the end, I did purchase it.... much to  my hubby's and bank account's dismay.

I finished picking up the load today (no, I couldn't get it all in one trip.) Thankfully my good friend Katie , brought her truck up today or I would have had to make yet another trip.

In the end there are three good sized Kilns, one of which desperately needs new coils. I don't know about the other one yet, but I am hopeful it won't need much as I really did wipe out a couple of my bank accounts getting all of this. *Now you know my motivation for getting some tutorials out.* HA!

To give you an idea of what I now have and will be selling shortly, I have taken a few pictures.


These are the sample boards. The enamels on the left are opaque, and the ones on the right are transparent. Some of the samples fell off during the trip, so I need to figure out where they go and put them back on. The middle board shows just a sample of the copper shapes I have. In some cases I have HUNDREDS of a particular shape. CRAZY!





This is what it looks like when you set out most of the copper shapes. SEE???? HUNDREDS, THOUSANDS. And I have to sort and count them. I was going to clean them all, but I am about to give that idea up. Riley and I worked for 6 hours last night, and we got 6 trays done and I have VERY green fingernails. This isn't even all of it. See those two little boxes at the end of the table with the drawers? Well, they also have a lot of copper pieces in them. Oh, and for a reference, my tables are about 10 feet long.



Then there are the boxes that have the dishes, switch plate covers, candle stick holders, creamers, etc. It doesn't end.... These boxes have quite a few larger pieces of copper. My favorites are the large square platters. There are two of them. Now I only have to decide if I want to keep them copper or enamel them.



You can see the Paragon kiln tucked away in the back. I really wanted to keep this one as it has never been used and is the most likely to actually work. It isn't digital, but I do have a pyrometer for it, so it was a fairly decent buy. The big kiln (blue one) in the front is one that I picked up today. It is 110v, so if it works, I just may end up keeping this one and selling the other. The paragon is 220v and I don't have a 220v available here in my current studio.



Here you can see the big blue kiln a little better. There is also another kiln on the right bottom of the picture. That rusted little box is a small kiln. This is the one that needs new coils. I will have to figure out what type of kiln this is and do some research. The inside is probably 8 - 10" wide by about 4 - 6" tall. Enough to do smaller jewelry type pieces easily. The boxs on top of and in between the two kilns are filled with.... what else??? Copper!


So these show the enamels, not very well, but there are hundreds if not more than a thousand packets of enamels. 6 gallons of Klyr fire, tools, more enamels, glass rods, stringers, more enamels, glass chunks, and even more enamels.

Oh, and there is a small trinket Kiln for scrolling. I am not exactly sure what that is yet, as I haven't done any of that. There is also another small kiln that almost looks like a beehive kiln and it is perfect for smaller jewelry sized pieces.

So, now you know why there is a sudden jump in copper jewelry from me. And as soon as I can figure out if the kilns work and where to put it if it does, you will begin to see a whole new line of work and workshops from me. YAY! I have always wanted to do more enameling, I just never expected to get this type of thing.

I will be selling the enamels and copper as soon as I get everything inventoried and cataloged. Hopefully it won't be long. But there is a LOT of work in this. I don't know about all of the enamels, I know there are a lot of leaded enamels, and I am really hoping that there are a bunch of lead free as well. We will just have to see. In the meantime, I am of to get some sifters and a respirator mask for Riley so she can play with me.