Spotted Brass

by Nancy Vaughan
(San Diego, CA)

A couple of weeks ago I was putting some lotion on my hands and when I set the bottle down it burped. The burped lotion landed on a brass bracelet that was on my dresser. I started to clean it up but then stopped and looked at it. I wondered what would happen if I left the lotion on the bracelet for 2 or 3 day.

When I washed the lotion off a few days later I got a real surprise. There was an unusual pattern where the lotion had been and it was a different color than the rest of the brass.

Not being one to pass up the possibility of an interesting experiment I decided to see what would happen if I put lotion dots on sheet brass. Would you believe...leopard spots!

Of course the next step was to make a piece of jewelry. So I made the pair of ear rings in the first photo. Then proceeded to put lotion dots on the piece of scrap in the second photo. Later I tried the same process on copper but the resulting spots were too faint with almost no color change.

Be prepared to take advantage of accidents. The results just might be so unusual you'll have to find a way to make some jewelry with it.

Nancy Vaughan
WickedWireworks