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How to create a patina or verdigris on brass charms

Here is the basic recipe for home patina:  make a solution of dark vinegar & salt, about five parts vinegar to one of the salt.  Use a large shallow glass baking pan.   Degrease your brass by washing in hot soapy water & drying THOROUGHLY.  Then place in the solution, being careful not to overlap or let anything touch together.  Soak for at least an hour.  Take out of the bath & put on a metal baking sheet & bake HIGH oven for an hour or until you like how they look.  Take them out, swish in the solution & bake again for another thirty minutes.   Remove from the oven, swish in the solution while hot with a tongs, don't touch them!  Metal is hot!   & then let them dry on two-three layers of wax paper.  This will achieve the beautiful blue-green patina.  If you don't want the verdigris, don't swish them in the solution again after the final bake.   After they cool or achieve the verdigris (sometimes you have to let them set overnight) then you can take them & buff them out, enhance with inks, acrylics, Rub and Buff, whatever you like.  You do really need to seal this sort of finish.  I prefer Renaissance Wax but for lack of that, you can use Turtle Wax from the hardware store---it, too, is a form of microcrystalline wax & the seal is very muted, matte, almost appears not to exist.....but is VERY durable, whether you use Renwax or Turtle. Renwax is the more professional finish.

 

 
 
 



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Two variations on the same charm
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e-04982
These two stampings were not patina'd at all.  Instead, I degreased the stampings & then applied layers of alcohol inks & a final touch up with Rub 'n Buff.    The one on top I used rust, gold & olive green Rub 'n Buff; on the bottom I used Rust, Black & Silver Ranger alcohol inks & then a little gold Rub 'n Buff. They were sealed  with matte spray lacquer from the hardware store.  Remember, if you seal the brass, you must do it FRONT & BACK.

Two variations
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e-04984
Here are two examples of the same tag....the one on the left used black & stone mountain blue alcohol ink over two-dip/bake oven patina.  The other was done with one bake. It was left alone to see how it would hold, & it did, nicely, but it was alot lighter than the one on the left. It was enhanced with rust & blue alcohol inks & some olive green-gold Rub 'n Buff.  One on the left is Renaissance Waxed, one on the right is spray lacquered with the matte spray lacquer from the hardware store.

Filigree Butterflies
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e-05001
Two butterflies from two different batches, but the same solution recipe.   Sometimes there is more copper in one batch of brass than another, depending on what sort of sheet the tooler used (and you may never know til you start trying to patina it---sometimes it's obvious but USUALLY it's not.)   One has the blue verdigis, the bottom did not have it.  I enhanced the bottom one with Rust alcohol ink, & they were sealed with Renaissance Wax.

Deco swirl
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e-05098
Here is a double baked piece that was dipped when hot so verdigris would come up, then buffed out by hand, hard, & Future Floor Finish Wax applied.

Leaves
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e-05099
These are twice oven baked & dipped in the vinegar salt solution & let to dry overnight, which produced this lovely verdigris.  They were buffed out by hand & Future Wax applied to see what would happen.....a nice subtle matte glow.