Rustnstuff: 06/18

Friday, June 29, 2018

Off to market

I have been making product to go to Maleny Additions and Entangle. This can be fairly mundane creativity. I can put a bit more interest into the work if I: look for ways to improve the pieces; streamline the techniques; and find new 'tools.

The photos below show some steps in the process of making 16 Leafspoons and the photo captions give an idea of what I mean by streamlining and or finding tools that work better.

©2018 Barry Smith - Four of the found tools that I suet progressively and gently unfold the leaves - the fifth step is setting the leaf on the anvil with a plastic-nylon mallet. From left to right the tools are: head of a chisel shaped hammer, wine barrel chisel, carpet layer's chisel and a heavy duty cheer knife.

Ten of the Leafspoons, along with 10 Tea Caddy Spoons, will be delivered to Maleny Additions tomorrow. There are some who say that people only really buy the Leafspoons so that they can get one of Fiona's handmade swing tags - could be right.

A good Friday in the garage-studio.

Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Contrasts

The last week has been a week of contrasts: sunny day; cold and windy days; and the last few days dreary drizzly rain and dim overcast light.

These contrasts can be seen in the photos following.

The sun casting rainbows into the house through louvre glass edges - an intense rainbow was playing on a Alex Bridge's small dark painting (Cause and Effect) on our wall of small things. The rainbow overlay could only be seen with this intensity from one specific spot in the office.

Sun shining on the Ken Munsie's garden stake chair sculpture at the entrance to the house - highlighting the patina on a fallen peace bird and the rescued bird's nest.

And this morning - there was no walk as it was drizzling. Early light through the lens was dark-navy blue - so dark that the iPhone lens was distorting the colour in an effort to pick up the detail of the leafless tree.

About a half hour later a small amount of colour and definition was emerging.

Sunday, June 24, 2018

Handmade

Over the weekend I got stuck into the stash of metal I had cut on Thursday and Friday. The first task was to make a batch of Tea Caddy Leafspoons as both Maleny Additions and Entangle were out of stock.

The metal blanks were marked up and cut and then the blank forms went through their process of transformation.

As you can see from the photos I made 16 Tea Caddy Leafspoons in all. I thought I had 15 blanks but as it turned out there were 16.

Friday, June 22, 2018

Metal harvest

Much of my hammered metal work is made from: silver-plated copper; silver plated brass; and silver-plated ENPS. The metal is generally cut from silver-plated trays that I find in op-shops or have them gifted to me. Quite often such trays become too much of a hassle for folk to clean so they go to op-shops; or get thrown in the garbage if they are too tarnished. Using this metal is a good way of giving these objects a new life.

I'm about to launch into a fairly solid period of making stock for Maleny Additions, Entangle and my on-line shop. So I decided to have a day of cutting the trays into the shapes and pieces I need for the work. It also gives me a chance to salvage a lot of the smaller offcuts for other projects; and of course I can harvest the small but good quality fragments for smelting - I separate out silver-plated copper and silver-plated brass into two different containers. The silver-plated copper results in a silver toned copper in the smelt; and the silver-plated brass gives a soft toned brass.

Below I will just share a heap of photos and record the size and purpose in the caption.

©2018 Barry Smith- Gorgeous 30cm silver-plated heavy copper tray with inscription in the centre. It is marked up for fungi bowl circles of metal - spaces are so I can miss cutting the three feet underneath

As well as about 10 other pieces I have set aside , the post shows 172 pieces of cut metal that resulted from the cutting process. Each of these will become hammered and stamped objects.

Wednesday, June 20, 2018

Dark winter walks

This mornings walk certainly started on the dark side. It wan't until I returned home that the valley had begun to show it's winter dawn colours of blue and pink.

But there is always a winter flower, last of the season's camellias, to give colour to the block.

And what is not to love about yesterday's moon in the sky before sunset.

Sunday, June 17, 2018

Updating the shop

For many reasons I have just not got around to updating the products in my online shop. But Fiona and I agreed that today was the day to at least make a start, Of course this included needing to refamiliarise ourselves with how to actually: upload text, do pricing, insert photos etc. And the task is not made easy when the internet slows down to a snail's pace.

Whilst I have not finished the task I have at least got a few more things into the shop including: the remaining three of the Fire Within series; a couple of my Daily Leaf Word sets; a leaf sculpture (Bending 6); and a couple of sets of hammered vessels. A few photos of a few of the items that went in today.