Metal Stamping And My Mishaps

I love the look of hand-stamped jewelry and have seen a lot about it while wondering around in blog land. I finally decided to try it myself...

Take one:

My "be" charm. This was a disaster. The stamps weren't going deep enough into the metal to make the impression I wanted. I went over the letters with permanent marker, but didn't realize until after I'd done it that I didn't have a wet cloth to wipe over it in order to remove anything that wasn't down in the lettering. Oops! By the time I got the wet rag, the marker had completely dried and instead of my charm looking stamped, it looked like it had just been written on with a permanent marker. Not attractive.

Take two:

This went a little better, but still far from perfect. I don't think the dog tag was actually made for stamping. The back was not completely flat, so you can see circles around the letters from my stamps. While stamping the heart, I ran into the same problem I'd had with my first charm. I was beginning to think that I had purchased faulty stamps when my oh-so-wise father-in-law (who was watching me in my frustration) reminded me that stamping on the dining room table probably wasn't going to give me my desired results. I had completely forgotten that the table would absorb the shock from me hammering the stamp into the metal. So I laid my blank pendant on a concrete floor and it worked perfectly. Yeah, I felt pretty silly.

Now that I've had some practice and made some mistakes to learn from, I am excited to see what kind of creations I can come up with :)