Ingredients: Studs, Chains, and Metal.

When I was little I used to be a huge fan of this Japanese cartoon called 'Saint Seiya'. It was about a group of warriors that fought against other bad warriors in order to save the world. Each of these warriors wore an armor that represented an astrological sign or a constellation. One would think that while watching this cartoon, a little boy would be drawn to their heroic acts and would want to be a superhero himself. Well in my case I was drawn to something different, their armor.

I recently started working with metal, mainly copper. When we were assigned to make a 'neck-piece' for my metals class I decided to take a completely different approach. One of the techniques used in metalworking is sinking. This technique is one that I learned pretty quickly and to my surprise excelled at. Sinking which is when you anneal metal and then hammer it against a block of wood with a small circular hole to give it the shape of a bowl. I decided that for my 'neck-piece' I wanted to somehow incorporate this technique.

I started off by sinking a sheet of metal into a bowl but accidentally, my skills at this technique had failed and I had made an oval shaped bowl which was not my original idea. When I saw this bowl, it reminded me of some of the armors that the knights of the zodiac wore and I placed it on my shoulder and really liked how it looked. I duplicated this accidental process in order to make a second one and they resulted into two very cool shoulder pads made out of copper!

 [shoulder pads]

After having made these two parts of my piece, I worked more on the design and thought about how I would like my armor to look like if I was a warrior. Since I am very drawn to the whole 'punk look' I decided to incorporate studs and chains into this piece. After having sunk both pads to fit my shoulders, I applied texture using a texture hammer that I really liked and had previously used in my earrings that I made a while back. After giving the piece texture, I symmetrically placed eight small studs on each of the shoulder pads with a larger stud in the center. The smaller studs were studded by simply piercing small holes into the metal with a fine file and then setting them just like you would on fabric. The larger studs were a little trickier to set. Since they were going to lie in the center of each of the shoulder pads, I wanted them stand out from the smaller ones. The technique that I used here was bezel setting. The way I did this was by creating a square shaped bezel that would fit the stud, attach the bezel with solder, and then set the stud by using the bezel setting tools.

The next step was to figure out a way to have these heavy copper shoulder pads actually stay on my shoulders. I decided to use chains to do this. The chains worked out very well because with the help of some jump-rings I made out of copper wire, they held my piece together very securely. Just when I thought I was done with my piece, I saw it and it looked like it still needed something else; something like an emblem or symbol that would personalize the armor as my own. I designed a geometric pendant and decided to incorporate this into the piece by having it hang on the center of my chest.

The final step in the making of this piece was to give the copper a finish. I decided to give the shoulder pads a rustic looking finish. I did this by dipping the piece into the patina bath, which is a solution of chemicals that metalworkers use to change the pigment of their pieces. It only took a few minutes to get it to be the tint I wanted it to be. After this, my shoulder pads were completely finished and I was very pleased with the final result.

[me wearing the shoulder pads]