Colleen Marmino of Shipman gets ready to demonstrate a jewelry-making technique during a recent Saturday at Ruby Wren Eclectic Boutique in Alton. The business features works by about 20 artisans.

During a pop-up show in Alton, Colleen Marmino of Shipman shows off the first piece of jewelry she made several years ago by trial and error. More of her jewelry can be seen on Facebook at Coco’s Own Copper Originals.

The allure of making copper, brass and silver jewelry is simple for Colleen Marmino. 

“I fell in love with the fire aspect of it,” Marmino said. “To be able to play with fire and not get in trouble was pretty cool.”

Marmino wasn’t playing with fire, but she was demonstrating other aspects of her craft on a recent Saturday during a pop-up demonstration at Ruby Wren Eclectic Boutique in downtown Alton. Marmino’s creations, under her business name Coco, are among the wares sold in the store.

Marmino fell into the craft while remodeling her home in Shipman. She was in charge of cleaning up the debris at the end of each day’s remodeling and came upon a piece of copper pipe.

“I was feeling it and, after a while, I didn’t want it to leave my hand,” she said. “So the next day I went into our garage and grabbed a hammer and started beating on it, and used my husband’s torch, and eventually made a cuff.”

Marmino signed up for metalsmithing classes at Macoupin Art Collective, watched videos on the internet and went through a lot of trial and error to hone her craft.

“I have a big 5-gallon bucket of scraps at home," she said. "Those are my mistakes, and I look at that and think I should probably sell it."

Marmino said there are two ways to make her copper, brass or silver jewelry pieces but both start with "annealing" the metal, or heating it up and allowing it to slowly cool while it is being formed.

For smaller items, such as rings or earrings, she uses a small mold or die and presses the hot metal into the mold using a 20-ton hydraulic press at her home. It often takes several times under the press before the item comes out the way Marmino likes. 

Larger items, such as bracelets and cuffs, are formed using texture plates, which look like larger molds, that are run through a rolling mill — “like a pasta machine on steroids,” Marmino said.

“Most of the time through the rolling mill it will come out really well the first time,” she said. Marmino then uses a fine saw to cut away the excess, and sands and files the item until the intricate piece comes out with no rough edges. 

“After everything is done you pickle it to get it all nice and clean, and while it’s still nice and soft you can form it into a cuff, bracelet or ring,” Marmino said. “The last step is to put it into a tumbler. It has little stainless steel pieces of shot of all different sizes and you tumble it for six to eight hours and it comes out all nice and pretty.”

Metalsmithing isn’t Marmino’s “real" job; she drives a truck to earn a living. But producing metal pieces of art certainly is her calling.

“I hate that it took me all of my life to find something that I enjoy this much,” Marmino said. “I like to be able to take a natural, raw material and turn it into something of beauty for somebody so they can wear it and have it forever.”

The pop-up demonstration was the latest way Aimee Parks, owner of Ruby Wren Eclectic Boutique, uses to promote the 20 local artisans whose items are sold there.

“These go over extremely well,” Parks said of the events. “We’ve had amazing community support for our boutique and our artisans.”