And finally, the piece de resistance. I think I was more excited about the Rolling Mill Earring class than anything else. See, I've been lusting after a rolling mill for a loooong time, but I just couldn't purchase it without trying it out. Class started after dinner on my second day there. I'd already gone to the Georgia O'Keeffe museum, gone through the Expo again, and taken a soldering class. I was a wee bit tired. But OMG ROLLING MILL SQUEEEEEEEEEE.
The rolling mill looks a lot like an industrial pasta maker. To use it, you place a plain metal blank and a texture in a file folder and roll it through the heavy duty pasta maker. And then you get gorgeous textured metal.
Our teacher gave us WAY more metal blanks than I expected, and some wire to make the earrings. There was one rolling mill for 10 of us, so we'd set up a little folder of blanks and texture and get in line to roll one pair of earring stuffs. Then, you got out of line, set up another folder, and got back in line. The teacher encouraged us to play with heat to make colors on the metal and to use torches to make the earwires. When I figured out it could take the whole 3 hours to texture all the blanks she gave us, I decided to forget the earwires and metal coloration. I mean, I could do that at home, but I don't have a rolling mill at home. So, I spent 2 hours getting in and out of line. Here are some of the super cool textured pieces I got to take home:
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| Brass circles with skeleton leaves and spiral hole punch; Silver filled circles with cloth; Copper ovals with window screen |
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| Copper circles with plastic mesh from produce bag and burlap |
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| Copper square with low-relief circles pattern for rolling mill |
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| Copper strip with open-weave cloth |
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| Copper square with lace |
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| Copper rectangle with wire mesh screen...or maybe it was a plastic produce bag...and lace on the backside |
TL; DR: NOW I WANT MY OWN ROLLING MILL. WANT WANT WANT.
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