Fabrege?

For fun, and because I didn’t want to clean the house last weekend, I took an enameling class. I had no idea how hard it was to enamel. Cloisonne enameling is when an artist makes a design out of wire, lays it on a piece of silver, and paints it with glass (firing it in a kiln after each step). It looks simple, but it is pretty hard. I now have a whole new appreciation for enameled cloisonné jewelry and really understand why the hand made pieces are so expensive. The simple piece I made took me almost 6 hours (and I cheated and wrapped each wire piece around a pen so that it at least looked like a flower). The piece didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to, but if I give it to Mom she has to love it because that’s what moms do. The artist that taught the class makes really intricate designs and bends the wire with her hands and sometimes pliers. If you see inexpensive cloisonné jewelry out there it just means that the metal work on the piece was probably made with a mold instead of being made up of individual pieces of wire.