While I’m working out the best way to make rings, I am wanting to do
something with earrings for Valentine’s day. I very much LIKE origami
and paper sculpture.
Last year for Mother’s Day I copied a heart strip sculpture and
implemented it as a heavy pendant using silver strip rather than
paper. Then I fixed it to a chain I made for her earlier. My wife
still adores it. I want to make something to go with.
I’ve seen some absolutely stunning designs for snowflake cutouts and
other folding based decorations, but in these cases the medium has to
be very thin.
One problem though: paper is far easier to fold back and forth, but
with fine silver foil (which I roll out myself) I could (1) risk
metal fatigue, and (2) not be able to get the creases out (though I
suppose I could anneal and flatten after the fact). So:
Question 2:
Does it make sense to glue paper to my silver foil, do my origami,
and then burn the paper away? I’m reasoning a paper backing might
help dampen the forces leading to the metal fatigue, as well as
making folding the crease back to flat far easier.
Andrew- you might also consider silver metal paper clay to make your
origami sculptural pieces. It is more expensive than using sheet
silver, but it works up like a dream. It comes in a sheet form like
paper and is very foldable and flexible. In fact, using the regular
silver metal clay, you can make your own paper sheet clay too. Have
a read up on it on the net. It was invented by the Japanese exactly
for origami work in silver.
paper [origami] is far easier to fold back and forth, but with fine
silver foil (which I roll out myself) I could (1) risk metal
fatigue, and (2) not be able to get the creases out [snip] Does it
make sense to glue paper to my silver foil, do my origami, and then
burn the paper away?
This is sheer speculation on my part, perhaps some others have done
this and know, but what the heck, I’ll jump in just for the fun of
it.
Why not use thin silver that isn’t so thin as to need backing? I
wonder if the silver foil being as thin as that might not
potentially be fire stained by sulfur compounds in the paper if you
burn it off. Surely the foil will be dirtied. How would you clean it?
I understand you’d prefer to be sure of the outcome in advance, but
you could try on a very small piece of scrap and find out. - just for
the fun of it.
If you do need to anneal something as thin as foil, why not do it in
a kitchen oven or in a toaster oven? Temperature will not get out of
hand and metal that thin might respond, at least adequately.
If you don’t want creases then I suppose you don’t want creases, but
fold-forming makes good use of them. If you aren’t aware of the many
fold-formed patterns do a search on fold-forming and Charles
Lewton-Brain and see what people have done with that design element.
A number of years ago, there was a woman here in Iowa that would
fold origami cranes as Barbara Ettles described with the metal clay
sheets. I found a book she wrote- Metal Clay Origami Jewelry by Sara
Jayne Cole.
Have you considered metal clay in paper form? I think this might be a
viable alternative. It is pliable, foldable and light weight after
being fired. There is lots of info out there regarding the use of
this material.