Lisa Kelly - Stamped Metal Jewelry Creative Techniques and Designs for Making Custom Jewelry

It all started with some letter stamps and metal sheet (oh yeah, and a hammer and bench block!). I loved making my first piece of stamped metal jewelry and have never looked back. That was six years ago, and the piece was a simple cuff bracelet that came to be known as my Say It on Your Wrist design. Soon my work space was cluttered with stamps, metal, and odd new tools. I taught and taught, and my students loved stamping as much as I did.

All those years of learning and teaching have come together between the covers of this book. I am so excited to put it all together to share with you. Stamping itself is a fairly basic technique, but my goal for this book is to show how compatible it can be with other basic wirework and metalsmithing techniques. Stamping can add the little extra something that makes your design special and truly personal. I cover a variety of techniques in this book, including riveting, hammering, dapping, and, of course, stamping. My hope is that you will use these techniques as inspiration as you improve your aptitude and skill.

Think of this book as a guidebook, a springboard, or a road map to send you down the path of stamped and riveted jewelry. Read each technique section carefully, and practice, practice, practice. Every project in this book is designed to incorporate different skills. When youve mastered these new skills, go ahead and create new designs of your own! Stamp, dap, and rivet away!

As you begin to make stamped metal jewelry, youll get to know and enjoy the properties of different metalsthe essential material for this craftand learn how to get the effects you want from each one. Keep a supply of different prefabricated blanks and pieces of sheet metal for whenever inspiration strikes, or practice time becomes available.

While the list of tools in this chapter may seem extensive, its okay to start small for simpler projects, or buy tools to share with creative friends. As your skills grow and your ideas multiply, you can build on the basics and expand your creative possibilities.

Using the right tool for the right job is the key to successful stamping and jewelry making. As with anything else, you pay for quality. My advice is to purchase the highest-quality tool that you can afford at the time. This way, you will avoid throwing away and replacing cheaper tools, which might break or wear, becoming unusable.

Metal stamps are the core of your stamped metal jewelry tool kit. With the letters of the alphabet and numbers from zero to nine, along with a few design stamps, you can express anything! The best stamp sets are made of tool-hardened steel, which will stand the test of time.

LETTER/NUMBER STAMP SETS Stamp sets of letters and numbers are available in various sizes and fonts. Youll find a wide variety of letter sets in a basic uppercase Gothic font; other fonts are also available, but they may cost a bit more. Look for good-quality sets that are sold in a compartmentalized box containing a slot for each letter. Trust me, when you are stamping out your words, knowing exactly where to find each letter makes designing much easier. Lower-quality stamp sets have letters with edges that are less sharp and will not yield a crisp impression. I also find that cheaper sets have letters that are inconsistent in size.

DESIGN STAMPS Design stamps come in a variety of shapes, motifs, and sizes. These stamps can add a bit of pizzazz to your designs and can be used in repeats or combinations to make simple or complex patterns.

These essential items are the foundation of your stamped metal studio; theyll aid you in working with the small pieces of metal that jewelry making requires and give you a good surface for stamping activities. Make sure that you work on a strong table. A weak or wobbly tablesuch as a card table or a TV trayabsorbs the blow, and again, your impression will not be deep and sharp. And safety glasses are a must!

SAFETY GLASSES Wear safety glasses when working with hammers and design stamps, sawing and drilling, punching holes, working with chemical solutions, and performing other metalsmithing activities. Its extremely important to keep your eyes protected.

BENCH BLOCK A steel bench block is the ideal surface for stamping. A hard surface underneath the metal ensures a sharp impression; other surfaces will absorb the blow and cause the impression to be weak. Steel bench blocks can be found in a variety of sizes and shapes; I use a 2" or 4" (6.5 cm or 10 cm) square block.