Valentine's Electroformed Heart Leaf

Valentine's Heart Leaf Copper Pendant | Electroforming

For Valentine's Day, there wasn't a better plant to use for a project than Smilax Aspera.

It's a perennial, evergreen climber with thorns, and it's also a poisonous plant.

It can be easily recognized by its heart shaped leaves.

Smilax was a nymph from Greek mythology.

She was in love with the young Croco, but the gods opposed their love.

Croco committed suicide and Smilax was transformed into a creeper.

She still shows her love with these beautiful heart shaped leaves.

Supplies

All the material and tools I've used for this project are:

With a super fine sharpie I marked the outline for the gemstones and I made the holes with a precision cutter.

Then I glued the hang ring and the stones around the holes with UV Resin.

I covered it entirely with conductive paint and hang it for at least an hour to let the paint activate.

When I dipped it in the electroforming bath, I noticed lots of little bubbles on top of the leaf.

With a brush, I broke the surface tension to avoid bubble to form again.

After 20 hours… maybe more, our leaf is finally ready. I removed it from the tank and washed it with distilled water to clean all the electroforming solution residue.

I then prepared a low concentrated solution of liver of sulfur and dip the leaf in to it. To accelerate the process and to make a more attractive patina, I added a pinch of copper sulfate crystals.

To neutralize all these chemicals, I added a glass of bleach before it can be flushed down the sink.

Initially, the patina had this color.

But after 20 minutes it changed in to a wonderful blue.

I added the chain, and it was ready to be shown.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Check the video on YouTube.

Thank you all! CuForming.