Blackening brass

When reading about ways of giving brass that gorgeous brown patina, I stumbled across a few short instructions of how to blacken brass (via B'Sue Boutiques). Kind of like how iron is blackened using heat and linseed oil. I think the instructions want you to polish the black away, which can be done rather easily, but I like the black surface. Just have to make it permanent.

For my experiment I used paraffin (mineral) oil, a small cat charm and an abused Vintaj blank. Both uncoated brass, though the later has been treated to give it a brown patina. I had already played with the blank and sanded it with coarse paper so not much of the original patina remained.

I think the results would be better and more lasting if I just bothered to clean the metal first... Though I like the uneven mottled colour on the brass blank. I held the pieces with pliers, hence the light patches around the hole/loop.