Progress!

Copper front.

Brass Backplate.

I traced a paper cutout for my bird and used a jewelry saw to cut out the metal bird.  I drilled holes into all four corners for the tube rivets and then rounded off the corners for a smoother look.  With the brass I annealed it and then took it outside and smashed it on the asphalt with a hammer.  it was severely warped after this so I had to anneal it again and flatten and sand it.  The copper will go on top of the brass after I cut out part of the top and bottom edges of the brass.

Top left-cutout of bird in copper, copper wire to be used for the staff part.

Above are some ideas that I have for my bookmark.  I have settled on the staff bookmark.  there will be a pendant that sits on the spine of the book with a staff that hooks over the spine and to the page you are holding.  I was inspired to have my theme for the pendant be somewhat romantic.  I was looking though my novels that I own and I came across "The Notebook" by Nicholas Sparks.  My mind kind of wandered over some of the scenes and came to one of my favorite short quotes form the book that stated "If you're a bird, I'm a bird."  Its quite cheesy but I kind of ran with it, thinking I could add a cutout of a bird.  So I researched bird silhouettes until I found one that suited my fancy.  For this project we had to incorporate rivets and some kind of texture.  I immediately chose tube rivets because they just look so interesting on everything else I have seen and my last encounter with a normal wire rivet was not pretty.  For the texture I want something rough that you could visibly and physically feel but I haven't gotten quite that far yet.  But I think I have the gist of what I want to do now! Yay!  

Inlay

Cutout copper sitting in the cutout hole of brass before being
hammered and rolled in place.  

Inlay set in place and finished. 

We did a demo in class that involved inlaying a different type of metal into another.  In my case, I chose to inlay copper since it is softer, into brass.  I started out with a sheet of copper and brass (the copper being thicker in gage than the brass) and cut out my shape of a tree into the brass.  Then I proceeded to trace the shape of the brass shape onto my copper and cut it out, making sure that it was slightly bigger than the traced edges to compensate for the width of the marking tool.  After making sure the copper fit slightly snug into the brass (left image) I annealed the copper then fit it back into the copper and hammered the edges so they would spread to the brass.  After hammering I soldered the remaining holes, pickled it, sanded the solder down, annealed the whole thing and ran it though the rolling machine.