Enameling Hotline

Welcome to Enamels & Enameling of Cloisonne Jewelry, Plique a Jour, Champleve and many other Enamel Jewelry Techniques.

I’m excited to discuss cloisonne jewelry and enamel jewelry making with you. I hope this will turn out to be a great resource for all of us as we share our ideas, challenges, solutions, and finally our finished enamel jewelry. Anyone who toils in their basement studio on their future masterpieces knows that it can be a lonely place when you hit a speed bump. If we put our heads together, we can spend less time crying over spilt gold, and more time producing great enamel jewelry!

You can post or make comments on any enameling topic listing on the top right of this page. If in those chapters there is not information on how to enamel that you have questions about, just write me in the comment box below and I will be glad to get back with you and help.

You can also upload one or more images to share or ask a question about,

just click on the “Browse” button below. Don’t forget to hit the  

“Submit” button when you are through.

Each topic on the top right is a chapter that is constantly growing as I add demos and information to them. So visit often and learn the beautiful art of Cloisonne and many other Enameling techniques. Many come to the site and  never get to the answer they cam for.

I teach “One on One” Enameling Instruction here in my studio, in Dallas Texas.

  Patsy Croft

Weekly News

Another wonderful book I came across this year is Arleta Peach’s Radiant Oils. Her demos are great for an enamelist.

Hauser Miller is whom I like to order my Cloisonne wire from as well as my Cloisonne bezel wire, for setting the cloisonne jewel. Here is a link to their site,

www.hauserandmiller.com/fab/bezel.html

Although I prefer to set my cloisonne jewelry with 2.5 mm high 22k gold bezel with a thickness of 26ga and this is not on their chart, but they will supply it for you. When I am working in silver I will use the same sizes of wire for my settings just in Fine Silver.

Lower on the page is their stock sizes of cloison wire. The two marked with the * are stock, readily available. The .005 x.040 is the taller wire and the .008. x .032 is the shorter in height cloisonne wire. I keep on hand 22ga 24k gold wire as some times I need to pull it down then roll out myself when creating a very thin cloisonne jewelry piece such as the back of these earrings.

The total thickness of the earrings is 1.5 mm. with a 24 ga fine silver disc in the center there is not much room for my cloisonne wires. The cloisonne wires might be 1/8 of a mm here.

On the front of the same earrings, 

And you can see on the front the wires are thicker and a bit higher. You can really customize the wires to your need.

When Andre 3000 from OutKast order the Mandrill Cloisonne Pendant. This Custom Cloisonne Pendant, he wanted thicker cloison wires in the jewel. Here I cut the wires from fine silver sheet to achieve the look he was after.