FREE Tutorial: Experimenting with Crackle Enamels

How to Enamel

When you're looking for ideas to upgrade your enameling, try Thompson Crackle Enamels. In this tutorial, I'll share some tips and tricks for using these interesting enamels to elevate your jewelry today. You'll need basic enameling skills and setup to apply what you will learn in this video. Let's get started! (oh, legalese: I'm not an affiliate for the tools & suppliers mentioned here)

 

  ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ watch the video on Youtube here

 

⇒ ⇒ ⇒ tap here to download supply list

 

 

BONUS! Crackle Enamel Recipes

 

As I mentioned in the video, clear crackle has been in my studio for a while. I really enjoy blending colors in different ways and made these cabochons for a giveaway at The Makery last summer. I believe in sharing, so here are my 'recipes' for achieving these combos.


For all of the pieces, start with sifting counter enamel onto the backs. Then, clean fire scale and oxides from the front and sides of the piece using your method of choice. 


For the first layer of enamel, sift 2030 Clear, 1915 Dove Grey next to each other (like stripes) and fire. You can over lay the grains a little bit, change where the blend appears, and so on. These colors were used on all five cabochons.


Then, sift a layer of Thompson 2008 Clear Crackle and fire. 


Finally, sift a third layer of color and fire. All of the pieces have two colors sifted perpendicularly across the first layer colors. From the left to the right, these are the colors that were applied to the cabochons above: 

* Red: 2880 Woodrow Red, 1890 Victoria Red
* Orange: 2840 Mandarin, 1840 Sunset Orange
* Yellow: 2110 Wax Yellow, 1237 Butter Yellow
* Green: 2310 Peppermint Green, 1360 Jungle Green
* Blue-Indigo-Violet: 2660 Nitric, 1745 Foxglove Purple

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1 comment

I appreciate your thorough explanation of your experiments when you got the 3 crackle mediums in the mail. I was getting confused – should have been writing things down as you did them (LOL). THEN I see you’ve written it down for us in your Blog. THANK YOU! You’re the best!
~ Babette

Babette K. Cox

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