Catering to keywords: Liver of Sulfur

I've been trying out Google Analytics and I must say, it's a great tool to have. It seems like a lot of people are concerned about inhaling Liver of Sulfur. It's known by another name: Potash Sulfurated and I found the MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet) for this compound.

You can take a look here.

Basically, "Inhalation of dust can irritate the respiratory tract. Production of hydrogen sulfide from reaction with acids or high temperature hydrolysis is a significant secondary hazard."

"Irritate". That's not very specific though, is it?

Here is a much better MSDS from Fisher Scientific. You can trust Fisher. I say so. Well, relatively at least.

"Ingestion: May cause severe gastrointestinal tract irritation with nausea, vomiting and possible burns. May cause central nervous system depression, characterized by excitement, followed by headache, dizziness, drowsiness, and nausea. Advanced stages may cause collapse, unconsciousness, coma and possible death due to respiratory failure. May form hydrogen sulfide in the stomach, which if absorbed, may be harmful and paralyze the respiratory center.
Inhalation: May cause severe irritation of the upper respiratory tract with pain, burns, and inflammation. May cause effects similar to those described for ingestion."

Suffice it to say, it's best to avoid the fumes! I wish I had my own fume hood at home.

A Colour Tool for Crafters

Some of you might have heard of it or are on it, COLOURlovers. It's a website that's dedicated to palettes, made by its multitudes of users. Users rate the best palettes, you can even incorporate palettes into different patterns and use them for backgrounds, graphics, etc. Originally, I stumbled upon the site when I was doing some web design and needed some inspiration for palettes. (Yes, I'm pimping myself out here.)

I became addicted.

Since last May, I haven't added any new palettes but it's definitely an excellent resource and tool for crafters. It's extremely useful to put any colours together to get an idea of how things look beside each other - cool vs. warm, harmony, dissonance, etc. Not to mention, you get to name your own colours! In fact, half the fun is naming everything and catching on to song titles, etc that other people are inspired by.

You can also enter the url of a picture somewhere and create a palette based on that.

And now for the fun stuff:


Color by COLOURlovers

I can see a gorgeous scheme with the first two colours of that palette.


Color by COLOURlovers

This is funky!

Now, I made this in like 2 minutes:

Color by COLOURlovers

Not that amazing, I know.

And a pattern based on that palette:


Color by COLOURlovers

Kind of eye-searing, I think it's green.

But playing around more can be quite satisfying and there's so many applications! And it's all free.

Adventures in Oxidizing Wire: Copper and Brass

Since I mainly use copper and brass, these notes concern those. So, if you're oxidizing sterling silver, there might be some slight differences although the general process for oxidizing wire is the same.

Kit Kraft is where I got my latest copper and brass wire. I'm sure there are cheaper suppliers out there for copper and brass, but Kit Kraft is super fast at shipping. I ordered and payed for my wire on Jan. 7th and it got here on the 9th. The shipping was $8 for about 2lbs of wire.

Boiled Eggs

Previously, I've used boiled eggs to oxidize since I've seen that frequently and it's accessible. I'm not a fan of wasting food though, so when I tried it I used one boiled egg.

1. In a zip lock bag, I put my copper things. They were ear wires, jump rings and toggles - basically small things. Then I put the whole egg, sealed the bag and smashed it inside the bag.
2. Since the yolk is the part that oxidizes, I kind of mushed that all over the findings as well as I could.
3. I waited a couple of hours, I'd say two or three and I could see the copper darkening to a medium brown. I left it overnight and it turned a dark brown, which is what I wanted.
4. Yes, the aftermath is messy. I use a pair of tweezers to put the things in a pail of water and then painstakingly used an old toothbrush to get the egg off the nooks and crannies off the findings.

It's also a bit smelly...

-Since I might have put in too many things to oxidize in proportion to the egg, some things weren't as dark as I wanted so if you try this method, maybe use two or three eggs if you have a number of things you want to oxidize. Also keep in mind surface area, since the reaction is finite - but that's the same for whatever you use to oxidize. I've seen that people oxidize a whole piece of jewelry, but I tend to oxidize the components before hand and then go from there.
-I wouldn't use eggs to oxidize long lengths of wire. I haven't tried it, but I think that you'd probably need to use a whole lot of eggs.


Liver of Sulfur

Or Potassium Sulfate. It's available at contenti.com or Rio Grande. I've tried to sign up on Rio Grande but wasn't able to (???). I'm still not sure what the trick is, apparently you have to sign up as wholesale, but I find that frustrating so I've given up. Contenti is good, but they have a minimum of $25 and I'm not in need of their other items. They also charge extra if you order under $25.

I went to a local bead store and the nice lady there give me a lump of it. I used it all up though last night, so if I want anymore, I'd have to probably somehow lie/trick/steal my way into being able to join Rio Grande.

1. I added hot tap water to a jar, dropped the lump in and closed the lid. Yes the fumes are stinky and quite strong.
2. Depending on the water to LoS ratio, obviously you get a darker, medium or light result. However, when I work with the wire, a bit of the oxidization tends of come off as I work leaving it a lighter brown so things being too dark wasn't a concern. Copper does oxidize pretty quickly, brass is slower but not a lot slower. You can reach a very black result with a bit of it, I think. I didn't really keep note of the water to LoS ratio but I think it depends on your preference anyway, so it's probably better to get a container of it and experiment.
3. I rinsed the wire in cold water and left it to dry overnight on some old newspaper.

Black Salt


I found this in my local Indian market. I think it's a pretty common "spice" in their food so it's probably not hard to find. It comes in a whitish powder and cost $1.69 for a small package. I added it to a jar in the same way I used LoS. I used at least three heaping spoonfuls and I achieved a medium-dark result so I think to get a black finish, you'd have to use at least five spoonfuls. There were 5 coils of wire in the jar though, so I think it depends on how much you put to oxidize as well. This also smells but not as strong as LoS. All in all, I think I'm going to use this because it's easier for me to find and it's safer to handle, as well as dispose of.

First Sale!

I'm happy on my first sale. Those Coraline button earrings went pretty fast.

Shop Revamp

I finally spent some time making my banner and avatar in Photoshop. So now, my etsy shop is all revamped and stuff, yay!
Of course the avatar is just a cropped portion of the banner, a little "trick" I learned while doing some web design a few years ago (twoish) to make things match. I once spent some time making myself a few sets of those popular swirl brushes but they're on another computer so I had to make do.

I spent most of the time optimizing the camera and a setup for better photos. Mostly, it was just going through all the modes and its options on the camera of how to adjust it for taking pictures close up in a certain lighting, in my case tungsten since I'm never home and it seems never bright off to use sunlight. I used a grey-green pastel paper sheet for the background. I actually have two full pads of pastel paper, since once upon I time I used pastels but now, I'm not patient enough for the powdery mess and other frustrations, but one day.

I spent the evening working on a necklace which sort of got "designed" as I went along. I started with the small button to match the earrings, but I added more and more things, simple like the czech beads and chain. Hopefully I'll finish it soon.

Coraline Earrings

I finally got around to setting up flickr and linking it to blogger. I fiddled around with the settings on my camera to take better pictures, but the batteries ran out just when I was getting closer >.< but there's a sneak picture of some new earrings I've been working on. Yes, those are buttons.

I updated the links and such.

I plan to take revamped pictures of everything because I'm not satisfied with the current photos. I might actually need a better camera, but for now I'll make do.

Fun Way to Buy Beads

I'm addicted to beads - almost all kinds. But I have a soft spot for semi-precious gemstones and yesterday, I came across a really fun way to buy beads: Limabead's Green Machine. Basically every 5 minutes, a certain item is discounted but if you wait too long, the item expires or gets sold out. I've seen some decent deals, while hanging around but I can't afford to splurge even though I really want to.

Edit: I'll update my links near the weekend and thanks to the followers!