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Wednesday, June 23, 2010

enameling part 8

one of the treasures found at the scrapyard was the door of an old dryer. it was covered with a layer of white enamel and pretty beat-up, scratched and dented. the surface can be manipulated with a variety of tools, drawn on with pencil, and/or more enamel can be added and then the piece can then be refired. adam whitney, the penland metals coordinator, cut the door up into pieces using an angle grinder and everyone who wanted to experiment with it could grab a piece. i scratched the surface with mine with a stone and then scribbled allover it with graphite. next i rubbed the graphite in and washed some of it away to create a subtle "stained" effect. next i drew the outlines of some favorite shapes and refired it. once the piece had cooled i scratched the surface some more. this was such a fun and exciting process. i loved it! the enamel refires beautifully--it melts like butter and so evenly--and now the graphite is a permanent part of the surface.

i like this technique so much i wanted to do some more of it, so i also played around with one of the pre-enameled steel plates given to us. the effect is the same except the color is black which gives the overall look a different feel.

more images on flickr.

thanks for reading.

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