I could probably stretch out my time in Quebec into a hundred New Things. (And come number 250 or so I might regret not having done that.)

But I think the last thing I'll write about from my time there is the fact that we visited a copper museum.

That's what you see here.

But visiting the museum by itself, while new, wasn't the highlight of that part of the trip.

That would be the fact that while we were there we all had the chance to do our own work with copper.

The name of the place was Cuivres d'art. I think, as the subtitle indicates in the above picture, that means copper art. But I want it to be, like, Museum of Copper Art.

Except, I suppose, it wasn't really a museum.

There is a display about the availability of copper in parts of Canada and the United States.

And there's a big exhibit in the back featuring incredibly detailed copper images of the life of Jesus. Religious or not - they were pretty impressive.

But the central spot is a display area, featuring copper you can buy as well as the spot where our activity was done, where we all made an image in copper.

I wanted to do something appropriate to our trip, so I decided on the maple leaf. That was a clutch decision I'm proud of, because it perfectly captured the trip, and usually I have trouble with those types of decisions.

I don't remember all of the steps exactly at this point, since I'm so far removed from it, but the first step was to trace (or create, as I did) your image onto the blank copper piece with a sharp tool, and then you had to just trace the inside of the image - kind of to give it depth.

Then you took a little rounded tool and traced around the outside portion, which made your image pop out a little more. Then there was one more step, which I don't remember. It might have been flattening somewhere else.

But it was a cool experience - definitely something I've never done before. (Though close to what I've seen some of my students do in their art class using clay, I think, as a medium.) Here's what the process looked like, kind of step-by-step: