I recently added a Pepe rolling mill to my studio equipment. With the mill I can impress patterns on metal. That opens up a whole new opportunity to add texture to the raw metals I use for earrings and bezel backings in my custom jewelry.
After annealing the metal (this "softens" the metal to make it easier to imprint) I sandwich the metal and the pattern sheet between two pieces of card stock. I use this to measure the thickness by placing the stack in between the rollers and closing them down to a snug fit and set my guide on the top to "0". I then open the rollers, take the bundle out, crank the rollers till I reach that "0" marking again, then tighten the rollers a quarter of a turn more to make sure that the additional pressure will give me a good imprint. I then crank the bundle through the rolling mill.
After the mill process I use a dapping kit and form the blanks into a curved shape that is ready for assembly
I have had a lot of fun using different things for imprinting. I use a couple of different sized hole punches on heavy weight watercolor paper and ran sterling silver thru with that pattern. It looked like shiny bubbles on a matte background because the texture of the paper transferred to the metal. I also found a great resource for rolling mill patterns on Etsy, RollingMillResources.
I have just begun to play with this new toy and expect to imprint a lot of copper, brass, and sterling silver in the coming months.
These earring blanks have been textured through the mill and formed by hand hammering with the dapping tools and oxidized with Liver of Sulfur.
Combine them earring wires and a bezel set stone that is soldered to the whole creating what you see here.
These are 6mm Turquoise cabochons set in Sterling Silver on imprinted Sterling Silver that has been oxidized with Liver of Sulfur.
These are garnets set in Oxidized Sterling Silver.