Rustnstuff: Resin

Showing posts with label Resin. Show all posts

Sunday, August 3, 2025

Birds, bowl and ampersand

As you can see from the opening photo I have finally finished the three comfort birds I started some weeks ago. They are so individual in terms of timber and shapes. Size and shape is often determined by the variation in the sawing, whittling sanding processes. For me the important thing is how they finally feel in the hand - and these three feel different but good. Some process photos follow. The birds are oiled with Lemon Myrtle eco oil.

A person wanted to purchase one of my larger (about 110mm in diameter) Starburst Bowls to hold some simple metal stamped daily words. Though the bowl could rest on its side and hold the words I thought a simple stand made out of a piece of 50mm in diameter copper tube would offer an alternate way of holding the words. The bowl and stand are shown in the photo below - I like the look. It is now packed and ready to be posted to its new home on Monday.

As part of our art studio garage sale I sold most of the silicone moulds I used for casting cement pieces. Of course one of the moulds we couldn't leave go was that used for casting ampersands. I decided to buy a small amount of two-pack resin and do a test cast of a resin ampersand. As you can see from the photo below it is looking good at this stage. It is slow curing resin so won't be dry for 24 hours.

There are days when doing a bit of this and that reminds one of the joy of unstructured creating.

Sunday, November 25, 2018

Small reflective pools

I did get time over the weekend to complete 50 tree of life small bowls.

After grinding and polishing the stamped and formed small squared bowls were ready for a pool of clear glass resin.

The glass resin adds another dimension to the wee gifts - it looks like they are not only holding water but each piece is like a small reflective pool. When held in the hand it is like looking through a layer of water at the stamped tree of life symbol below.

There are multiple layers to these small pieces: metal that is being given a new role and meaning; the micro bowls reflect alms bowls; the stamped tree of life symbol is linked to new beginnings; and the clear resin is linked to clear water one of the important elements of life.

Sunday, February 5, 2017

Hope and Peace giveaway

At the moment there is quite a bit of despairing sadness that seems to be swirling around all of us. I thought a hope and peace giveaway could just add a little to the ledger side of hope and peace.

So I have decided to have a giveaway of ten pendants - mainly resin and watch part pendants. The photos are not great - bit of a rush and only took one photo of each.

I will send a pendant to the first 10 folk who leave a brief hope and/or peace statement or saying on my blog (not Facebook). So go for it - send a bit go hope and peace out there by mindfully adding you hope and peace statement. If you are interested in a particular pendant just add the number to corresponding to the piece to your statement.

Thanks for adding your voice to hope and peace.

Friday, February 3, 2017

Recycle and resin

I'm just finishing the sorting phase of the year so hopefully will get to the first of my art projects over the weekend.

The bench was still littered with bits and pieces that need to be sorted including: giving a bit of new life to brass and steel ring objects; and I had to salvage some of the resin works done by the school children. Fortunately there was left over resin from the children's work which I had fun making a few pieces.

First the brass and still rings. After drilling out rivets and removing excess metal the bits were ready for polishing. They came up well.

I needed to salvage some of the children's resin work as we had a batch that did not harden. In the flurry of activity on the day we probably just did not measure and mix part A and part B properly. Bit of a mess as you can see below.

So I decided to redo 10 glasses and 10 bags of rubbish and resin. I know it does not replace the children's unique work but I just did not want them to feel that did not have a reminder from the workshop.

With the leftover resin I was able to set in resin: a slightly badly formed silver-brass metal heart; some convict nails; brass offcuts and a silver-plated starburst bowl; and finished the layers of watch cogs piece I have gradually built up from excess resin.

©2017 Barry Smith - Layers of watch cogs - probably 10 layers - using up left over resin over the past year - set in hammered silver-plated bowl made from a goblet base. About 6-7cm in diameter and about 12-15mm deep.

These were good tasks to get finished on Friday. Almost time for pizza and red wine????

Sunday, November 20, 2016

Environmental awareness art workshop tomorrow

Fiona, Christine E and I will spend all day tomorrow offering three separate workshop activities for all (over 120) of the students at the Amanda Marga River School. The school has agreed to set aside the normal schedule and participate in six sessions where each student will create: resin pieces with me; weather grams with Fiona to go on a metal tree; and jelly-plate prints with Christine.

The art work will be installed on Tuesday afternoon (22/11) at the the Art& Ecology Centre Tanawha as part of the Water and the Environment Collaborative Exhibition. The key artist in the exhibition is Japanese environmental artist Maseru Shimokawa (Daily Walks Notebook); supported by Dr Leah Barclay (River Listening).

I finished my preparations for the resin workshops today. This included chopping up some of the rubbish the students had collected from waterways.

I checked to see that I had enough plastic bags and shot glasses for each student for resin moulds.

Getting the eight litres of resin out.

Cutting small pieces of paper for the students to put into the base of the resin moulds - they all want their work back.

I did a final test run of the shot glasses and plastic bags.

So I'm all ready to go. I'm looking forward to seeing what gets created; should be about 250 resin pieces in the installation. Could be interesting photos for reporting on the installation of works.

Friday, September 9, 2016

Polishing, packing and production

Today has been another of those here and there art days.

I have been polishing leaves for the citizens festival in Tatebayashi and cutting, stamping and polishing peace words for giving away in Japan; polishing art works and packing them for three exhibitions - Sano in Japan, Calondra Gallery and the Kenilworth art competition; finishing resin keyring for Entangle; and making a couple of pendants for a friend to buy as Christmas gifts (is it that time already).

Leaves and peace words for Japan.