Some bits for overseas market

 

Whilst we are at the cottage in Scotland, Fiona and I have booked a stall in April at a market day in our local community hall in Armadale.

The bits I'm taking over for the stall are metal including functional leaf items, small metal books and metal pendants and earrings. All made from recycled metal.

I have just finished off some more star and heart pieces - pendants and earrings including the star earrings and pendants in the first photo.

More photos of the bits follow. Some of the pieces still bear the marks of the saw and the moulds.

It will be a joy to display and hopefully sell our art in our local hall in our local Scottish villag.

No to war and a few less important bits

 

Over the weekend Fiona and I printed our No to war posters. A simple message really - war is just not acceptable in any form - the people who will truely suffer and be destroyed are ordinary people - ordinary people going about their daily lives - trying to live ordinary lives of love and joy.

I printed two versions of the poster - one simple and one that resulted from over printing three times with one ink up; and masking off the attribution between prints. Though the poster at the bottom of the image has a ghostly second print of the attribution - ink bleeding through the masking paper. The posters are 25cmX35cm.

I like the grain and historic colouring on the wood type I used.

Today I managed to complete a few metal hearts and stars - maybe be fitting given the no to war message. I made pendants from the star metal pieces that had a shadow of a star still on them after I sliced off the bits for earrings.

 May we say No to war and yes to Imagine peace.

But first hearts - then other stuff

 

Another one of those weekends where I attended to a few things: printing a couple of layouts of my Daily Words booklet; doing some preparation for the installation of the posts on Monday; processing bunya nuts; slicing a lot of heart formed metal ingots; and packing buffalo and bone earrings and delivering them to Maleny Additions. The final pile of the sliced hearts in the rough are above.

Some other photos of the hearts follow: first there are solid silver hearts, then silver-brass hearts and finally hearts attached to a few of the over-poured metal. The smallest hearts are about 1cm across. They all look rough in their cut state - but after drilling, grinding and polishing they will be ready to be turned into gorgeous earrings and pendants.

On Saturday I managed to print four pages - two sheets of my Daily Words booklet. I'm printing 25 copies to achieve 20 quality prints. It is working out well - Fiona assisted with advice about the most efficient printing sequence. The words next to the word Joy are not about Joy; but rather the word Shine.

SHINE

So a full weekend. I didn't get back to the spreading knives - probably get to those during the week.

Transforming

 

During the week, and again today, I have been finishing some melted metal work. Whilst I love the colours that developed on the back of the cross form above; I love the story behind the pendant and earrings below.

I occasionally get asked to rework some family item (silver-plated objects, trays etc); often because folk don't want to keep cleaning big trays etc. But this last request gave me much joy as the friend wanted a silver object that belonged to her dead husband transformed into a heart pendant - a beautiful wearable memory piece. I was also to transform a broken gold chain and odd bits of silver earrings into gold/silver earrings. The outcome above was received with much joy by the owner.

The crosses, hearts and ingots below were being ground and polished to go to DEP shop. I poured the extremely hot melted silver-plated brass into cold moulds - I think the sudden change of temperature resulted in air-pockets and rainbow colours on the underside of the metal.

I rejoice when I get those happy accidents.

Melting metal and progressing giveaway leaves

 

I was working on two things in parallel today - melting metal; and fast tracking 44 inspiration stamped leaves to be given away randomly in the future.

The photo above shows the back of a freeform piece of melted metal - a combination of gold, silver and brass - silver-plated brass was added to stretch the quantity of the metal. This was a very small melt of a combination of scrap metal that I have had saved and plan to use to make earrings and maybe a pendant. 

I'm sharing photos of a freeform piece that will most likely become a pendant (it is about 4cmX4cm) - the opening photo is of the back of the piece; and the photo below is the front after a rudimentary wire brushing. The pinkish colour comes from the gold and the fire colour comes from the copper in the brass. Sharing because I love the fire colour.

I melted more of those ornate metal edges from a drink tray to cast the cross and two hearts - they still need to be ground and polished. The reddish colour is from copper in the offcuts but it will disappear in the polishing process - the final product will be silver in colour.

Following are process photos of the 44 leaves. 

As you can see from the photos I used a brake to bend the metal; and a vise to fold them - a way of fast tracking through a couple of stages.

Fold forms marked up and cut to shape.

And then hammered ready to be opened and ground and polished.

I did not get the leaves finished as I had a couple of interruptions whilst in the workshop.

Cutting pages for future pieces and melting ornate edges

 

I spent quite a long time measuring metal for the pages of small metal books; book pendants and book earrings. I have run out of my tiny book earrings (18mmX12mm); have a few small metal books 45mmX30mm) with inspirational words; and have run out of book pendants (30mmX25mm). I tend to cut the pages for these from good quality silver-plate. 

Whilst measuring and cutting I wanted to test how the ornate edges of a silver-plated tray I had cut up earlier would melt - the metal tends to be an alloy of tin, zinc and copper. 

The results are shown in the opening photo. The metal has a melted buttery look about it. It is good to know that it can be used for pouring metal forms.

The photo below shows the stash of 120 'pages' ready for stamping for books (10 books), pendants (5 pendants) and earrings (10-12 pairs).

Marking up for cutting and other process photos follow.

There is a lot of work to be done on these before they are ready for sale.