Aimee,

See the letter below that I sent to the Art Jewelry Editors. Maybe we will get an answer. I listed what I did and what I think may be wrong, for me anyway. I have never worked with enamel before and I was so excited to make it and so dissapointed in the outcome. I used the small torch like she did. What happened with yours?


Editors:
I have a couple of questions....

1) what is the purpose of washing the enamel? Do you have to wash it? Can't you just use it ouf of the jar?

2) Is the correct enamel to use numbered in the 2000 range at Thompson?

3) When you say, "stacks of clean paper" what do you mean? I used paper towels and it was an awful mess and some of the enamel seemed to soak in to the paper towel.

I bought some enamel this weekend from my LBS and ran home to try the necklace. I washed only one of the colors of enamel...what a mess. I used paper towels and it was a big gloppy mess that seemed to soak into the towel.
The next morning it was finally dry and i followed all the steps. The balls on the end of the wire never turned a color....most of them stayed a gray color. I am thinking that the enamel i bought at the bead store was not the proper enamel. The numbers on the enamel from the store were in the 9000 range.

Please help and let me know what I did wrong.