Peace, love and revolution

I made this rosette yesterday according to the instructions in this demo.  I'm not sure why mine turned out so messy; it may just be lack of practice, or it may be the fact that it's a very narrow (5/8-inch) ribbon.

The pin is heavy-gauge sheet brass, etched as usual and painted with Testors enamel.  As I didn't have an extremely fine brush, the enamel tended to slop out of the recesses, but with the brass well burnished, I was able to scrape off the excess with a needle when it was half-dried.

The pin has not yet been lacquered.  In my experience, spray lacquers invariably take away some of the metallic shine, but the alternative is to let the metal tarnish.  Lacquer will at least keep it bright and glossy.

The rosette is sewn to a circle of blue garment leather with a hole poked through the middle, and I soldered a tie tack back to the face, sanding the back of the face and the top of the tack to make sure the solder would adhere.  The solder this time was a low-temperature paste, and I slid a pair of heavy brass beads around the actual pin to act as a heat sink, all in an effort to prevent the pin from annealing and becoming too bendable to poke through fabric.  I'm not sure how well I succeeded (the beads were glowing orange by the time the solder melted), but it seems to work okay.  All of this, of course, was done before the final polish, burnishing and painting of the face.