Beauty - inside and out

 

When I was doing my pre-walk exercises this morning my eyes were filled with the beauty that Fiona has brought into the house from the native trees and bushes around our home. Such an abundance as you can see from the opening and photo and the following.

Immediately outside I marvelled at how the sun was capturing the colours in the jars F was using to dye thread with petals from our neighbour's garden flowers; and later I rejoiced to see the colours of the threads themselves.

On my walk my eyes drifted to many of the types of blossoms that were also inside our home; and a few others of course.

G's orchid house is becoming filled with orchid blossoms as the weather was.

So much beauty inside and outside our home.

 

Wee messages for peace

 

Fiona and I will be in Scotland on International Peace Day (21 September)  - so we will be installing peace weather grams and copper peace doves at the Armadale cottage.

But we wanted to have a peace connection between our home in Maleny and the cottage so we installed 7 peace weather grams and 7 copper peace doves in the magnolia tree out the front of our Maleny home. The opening photo a beautifully patinated copper peace dove hanging in the tree.

Below are a couple of photos of Fiona and I hanging weather grams and doves.

A few of the weather grams and doves in place.

May these small material tokens and our thoughts send a few peace vibes out into the globe - may there be a little more peace and a little less war and violence.

A request from a friend

 

A friend asked if I could make some timber cubes and 'towers' to display objects such as in the photo above.

I agreed to do the task using salvaged rough sawn rose gum timber - as you can see from the cut pieces below. 

I indicated that the final products would have the worn and used look about them. In all I made 4 cubes and 4 'towers' even though only three of each are shown here. A few photos of the progress and finished pieces follow.

Not art as such - but beautiful all the same.

Beauty after rain

 

The air felt so light a clear this morning after light rain overnight. I am always drawn in by the droplets lining to the rain washed plants and blossoms. The intensity of colour of a single iris  in a kerbside garden drew me in.

Love the crystal clarity of a drop of water on a crinkly kale leaf.

The lorikeets were out celebrating and cleaning and preening this morning; and they are loving the grevillea flowers.

G's orchids were also refreshed.

Over breakfast Fiona and I talked about the importance of finding hope in small things and in random acts of kindness - holding on to those things when there are so many big and darker things are beyond our control.

The magic of multiples

 

Making multiples can be hard work - the task seems to take so long to come to an end. I was determined to get the 7 sets of Daily Leaf Words finished over the weekend - in fact there were 8 sets of leaf words as you can see from the photo above (56 word leaves in all). I managed to find a spare Daily Word bowl at the studio so was able to make up 8 sets as you can see from the photo below.

A couple of photos of the bowls and leaves finished  - one on the work bench and the second of the seven bowls reflecting the painting on the wall.

Following are a closer shots of a few of the bowls with words including the torn bowl and the spiral bowl with a couple micro cracks.

A great outcome.

Stitched metal...

 

I'm making an effort to finish off some metal work before heading to the cottage in Scotland. I planned to make 7 Daily Leaf Word sets. I have all but finished the sets of leaves; but had hardly made a start on the bowls - today was the day as you can see from the photos in this blog post. 

But working with metal can have its challenges. I was using metal cut from different silver-plated trays - some silver over copper and silver over brass. However I discovered that one larger tray I cut up was in fact silver over brass that had nickel added to it - makes it more silvery.  In past blogs I have reported that depending on the amount of nickel the metal can't really be annealed and can be prone to split. The metal on two of the bowls split. As you can see from the opening photo one split badly. Rather than scrap the bowl I decided to finish hammering it into shape and stitching across the split with 1mm brass rod. I like the outcome.

Before I show some process photos, below are few more photos of the two split bowls - including a spiral patterned bowl - the only ones I completed today. The shiny metal was reflecting the painting on the wall - I rather like it.

And as promised some process photos.

I hope to finish the other 5 bowls over the weekend.