Enameling Cookbook...

In the kitchen, I am notorious for never making the same dish twice.  I am an "intuitive cook" and often work from instinct and half-remembered recipes, improvising in between.  While the results may be "good", they are far from consistent.  Those that eat my food often times lament the fact that I rarely write down my recipes and always hope that lightning strikes twice when I'm trying to replicate a dish.

After I read Torch-Fired Enamel Jewelry: A Workshop in Painting with Fire by Barbara Lewis, I went a little "hog wild" and started enameling everything I could get my hands on.  Like my cooking, I achieved results that I thought were "good" but I definitely noticed that some were better than others.  I found myself in the same boat.  "How did I get that color?  Did I layer this color with this one?  Or was it that one with that one?"  So, in order to combat my natural bad habits, I've decided to create my own personal "Enameling Cookbook" where I store all my "recipes".

Above are some of my first recorded experiments.  It's a rather dull affair; I don't too much care for production work.  But it is a good baseline and I can see definite improvement in my consistency.  Could this mean that I've turned over a new leaf?  Probably not.  But it's an exercise that I'm learning from.