Trio of wee birds

 

Today I finished off the three wee birds I have a commission for. As you can see from the photo above they are similar but unique - finished birds on the workbench. The grain of the offcuts of wood a friend gave me dictated the carving and sanding and final outcome to a certain extent.

Some process photos follow.

Below is another photo of the completed and oiled birds taken through the workshop, aka shed, window.

I now need to organise the delivery of the trio.

Below is photo of our table from the market yesterday - we had a successful day.

Stones for market and other matters

 

Fiona and I have a table at the Watten Craft Market tomorrow ( Saturday 31 May). 

We have a good range of pieces including Fiona's pebble inspired earrings, cards, art pieces, some of my wee watercolours, metal books, leaf spoons and stones with inlaid silver and brass wire.

I decided to make some more stones for holding in the hand. The opening photo shows some of the stones I have made. Below are a couple of photos of the making process.

On Wednesday our creative energy went into replacing the 'felting' on the roof of our workshop aka garden shed.

Fiona was a bit taken with the neat arrangement for the garden tools - her photo is quite artistic. Having a place for everything in the workshop-shed means we can use it comfortably for both purposes.

We hope to see heaps of folk at the Market to yarn to about our art; but of course sell a bit of our work.

Baby magpie and Murkle market

 

Much of the time today was taken up with: cutting slate, cutting grooves in stones for Fiona and putting together timber off our old roof for a future assemblage. The preparations for future pieces will be covered in a future blog post. Today's post is about installing a metal baby magpie we brought over with us; and a few images from Murkle markets yesterday. 

Metal baby magpie above and below. This wee bird will rust - it is cut from corten steel. We have quite a few of these wee birds rusting on a tall tree stump at our Maleny home. I love the lichen on the post.

Our table at the Murkle market was very similar to that at Watten - but fortunately the visitors were different. The photo below shows another stall holder who was interested to hear the recycling story behind my work.

Following is a photo of our table after set up; and a few of the groups of product.

We had a good day; and people expressed the view that it would be good to see us again in 12 months time.

Art and craft fair

 

Yesterday Fiona and I participated in the Watten art and craft fair. Quite a long day given Watten is an hour's drive from our village - in all it was an 8 hour day. All the photos in the blog, including the opening photo of our stall set up, were taken by Fiona. Lovely quiet combined spread of Fiona's and my work.

At one point in the day the sun was shining on our stall - Fiona took some great close up photos as you can see below.

Lovely image of Fiona's cards, hand made books with wrap pond images from our village, prints and hand stitched pouches.

We had a successful day in terms of sales - but also catching up with folk we have met at previous fairs; and we made some new acquaintances. We have been invited back when next we are over - we think our stall offerings are a bit different to the usual offerings. Next Saturday we will be participating in the Merkel Markets - another invitation to participate.

A successful market

 

Fiona and I had a wee market stall at the Watten Village  Hall Craft and Produce Fair on Saturday (24/9). We never know how these ventures will go given markets are a bit unusual for us; and doing them in another country always offers a few extra challenges.

We didn't have the sophisticated display that many other stall holders did; and our range of product is always dictated by what we can bring from our home studio-shop. But I think the opening photo shows that we had an interesting table. The following photos show us in setting up mode.

A few more images of our table. We used old slates from the cottage and stones from the cove to display our work. I love Fiona's Solace Stones - beautiful; feel in the hand and poignant sentiments.

Good crowd in attendance - see below.

We had a successful day - sold quite a few bits; and got very positive feedback on the quality and difference of our work. We have been asked to participate in a couple more markets during the time we are here - we will see how our time plays out. 

Market

 

Fiona and I had intend to participant in one market, in our local village hall, whilst we were over here. However we were invited to participate in an Easter market in Watten on Saturday. We calculated we had brought across enough product for two markets so we went ahead. Photo of Fiona setting up above. Photos of setting up and product below.

Photo of Fiona and I behind our stall table - looking chirpy!!!

We had a successful day Saturday. We will repeat the experience next Saturday. It has been good to show and sell some of our stuff in our local Scottish home.