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Due to popular demand, today I bring you a flame painting tutorial. It truly is amazing to see the copper come to life in an array of shimmering colours as you heat it with a hot flame. Today I will give you some of the basic knowledge to get you started on your own flame painting adventure. This skill is best learned through practise so I encourage you to just have a go.

Demonstration of copper "flame painting" at the Ozark Folk Center. The noise is a bit soft, but the demonstration is impressive.

Getting a well defined sunburst multi-coloured pattern on oxidized copper. This is an interesting technique because first it puts a thick layer of oxidisation on the copper, then it uses a "reducing" flame in the torch to remove the oxidisation where the flame goes. (A reducing flame is one where the air-hole in the torch is completely closed, so the flame has less air (and thus oxygen) in it.)

Step by step photo-tutorial on how to anodize titanium with household materials (waterproof container, aluminium, water, borax, several 9-volt batteries, insulated electrical wire, rubber gloves). It also suggests you can do it by heating up the titanium with a blowtorch (or gas stove). Depends whether you want to mess with gas or electricity, doesn't it? Some things I would do a bit differently: (1) I wouldn't line the entire container with aluminium foil, just enough to make it bigger than the piece one is anodizing (2) alligator clips attached to the wires would be better, though remember that ONLY the titanium can go into the solution, therefore either the item needs to be dipped twice (one at each end) or a titanium hook needs to connect between the wire and the item itself (so that the item can be fully submerged)

Useful tip: you can anneal copper (to make it easier to stamp and bend) on an electric or gas stove; it isn't necessary to have a (butane) torch. If you don't need to melt or solder metal, the temperatures of a stovetop are enough for annealing.