Valentine's Electroformed Heart Leaf

- February 14, 2022

For Valentine's Day, there wasn't a better plant to use for a project than Smilax Aspera.
It's a perennial, evergreen climber with thorns, and it's also a poisonous plant.
It can be easily recognized by its heart shaped leaves.

Smilax was a nymph from Greek mythology.
She was in love with the young Croco, but the gods opposed their love.
Croco committed suicide and Smilax was transformed into a creeper.
She still shows her love with these beautiful heart shaped leaves.

All the material and tools I've used for this project are:

With a super fine sharpie I marked the outline for the gemstones and I made the holes with a precision cutter.

Then I glued the hang ring and the stones around the holes with UV Resin.

I covered it entirely with conductive paint and hang it for at least an hour to let the paint activate.

When I dipped it in the electroforming bath, I noticed lots of little bubbles on top of the leaf.
With a brush, I broke the surface tension to avoid bubble to form again.

After 20 hours… maybe more, our leaf is finally ready. I removed it from the tank and washed it with distilled water to clean all the electroforming solution residue.

I then prepared a low concentrated solution of liver of sulfur and dip the leaf in to it. To accelerate the process and to make a more attractive patina, I added a pinch of copper sulfate crystals.