Hammered Copper Bookmarks – Quick Gift For Friend

Today I am making a quick gift for my friend whose birthday is today!  I know I seem to do this a lot, end up making something on the day of, but this time, I have already sorted out the main gift and I just wanted to make a “quick” something extra to go with it.  And it’s these little copper bookmarks.  The picture is a little crappy as it was dark and so it’s a bit shadowy but at least the copper shows up really well!

Here’s some ideas of how the cat looks when in use and to give you an idea of size, here it is on the book cover.

Peeking out of the top of the closed book…

Peeking out of the side of the book…

And how it looks inside the open book…

And the shepherd’s hook style looks like this…

And when in use, it looks cool dangling over the spine…

And inside the open book…

I made two cats and two shepherd’s crooks – one with the green bead and one with the amber bead. However, after I had hammered them, I felt they were too shiny and so to add some depth and interest, I dunked them in a liver of sulphur bath.

This takes no time at all, and after they were done, I scooped them out, cleaned them and polished them up.  You can see the difference it makes below.  It’s really handy for highlighting some of the hammer marks and for inside the spirals.

Here’s a look at the second pair I made …

Compare them to the photos above where they were shiny copper and see which one you prefer.

And again, I really love the spirals after they’ve been treated with the sulphur bath.

Now all I have to do is get them wrapped up and go visit my friend and wish them happy birthday!

So I said at the top of the post that this was a quick gift, and it is very quick just so long as you have everything you need to make it!  I had everything in my house, the wire, the beads, the jewellery pliers, hammer and the sulphur, so it really didn’t take me long at all to make these and so I could make them on the same day as I was planning to give them to the recipient. I love it when that can happen, if you are under pressure and have no gift, and then you can pull out something quick like this from your bag of tricks!  Awesome!  However this will be a lot less quick if you first have to go out and buy all the supplies or order them online and wait for them to arrive!  So please bear that in mind when you see “quick gift” in the post, it really is quick if you have everything already in your stash. 🙂