Alchemy - Pewter to Dragon

Turning pewter into a dragon isn't 'embossible', to borrow the phrase from Lynda Abare, Repujado artist. It all started in the wispy dawn in a dark room with 10 students eager to explore the secrets of metal magic. Many hours later under the tutelage of our mentor, we transformed slabs of pewter into a Illuminated motif bookmark with polished stone paper. The paper technique was another poof, poof, poof transformation.
No break for underlings, straight into a silver tone cachet to hold dried bat blood, frog tongues or just stray safety pins. This pewter sheet became a fire-breathing, scaly horned dragon in my hands.
And finally, the Embossing Guru led us through the intricacies of The Precious Art Book. What invites a reader to touch, open and page through a book? Of course, the cover. Every student explored and produced a different exqisite example of repujado to enhance the cover. Oh yes, we measured, cut and pasted and did all the prep work, no magic here. There is more finessing to be done before it is published. Not to mention the contents that have to be created.

Printmakers are thought of as people who scritch and scratch on metal plates, fill the air with acid fumes and then die young and poor. Go forth Sculpy artists and produce! Sculpy is a craft clay often used for beads, figures and hobby stuff. It also makes a great little relief/intaglio plate. I warmed and worked up a piece of this product (flesh color seems to work best) and then rolled it out like cookie dough. It takes impressions very well. I used fibers, buttons, pencil, stylus and anything that I could press into the surface. Baked it per the directions. I found out that taping the bottom with drafting/blue painting tape helps preserve it through many press runs. It is fun, non-toxic and cheap. Twisting Sun is about 5" across and I used Charbonnel Aqua Wash Ink.