Family, flowers and frolicking platypus

 

Over the weekend we went to the coast to catchup up with F's family from Brisbane. It was a beautiful blue sky day resulting in many refections on the ocean as you can see above; and contrast of the trees with the sky.

The flower images below are from a few walks. Given we are in the depths of winter there are few flowers but still  enough to cause one to pause.

On our Sunday walk F managed to photograph a platypus and cormorant feeding. The cormorant follows to platypus to gather what the platypus has stirred up - good team work!!

I managed to take a reasonable photo of the platypus!!!

Hearts, stars and leaf butter knives

 

A good day in the workshop working on melting, moulding and stamping metal - hearts and stars; and making leaf butter knives.

Opening photo shows a stash of stamped hearts that will be gifted to those you need them. The hearts are stamped with: go gently, hope, love and care. 

Following are some stars that will also be gifted to remind each of us that in our own way we are stars.

When I was sorting metal to melt I came across a bunch of larger brass and copper hearts - I gave them a polish as you can see below. They will probably make their way to Scotland and be offered for sale as paperweights.

A couple of other melted metal images follow.

For the Pop Up Art Show I wanted to make some leaf butter knives from salvaged silver-plated brass. In the past I called these leaf forms-objects pate knives - but in reality they have many uses - including spreading butter, cutting soft cheese, spreading pate, spreading jam.  I made five as you can see from the photo below.

A couple of process photos follow.

So all in all a good use of time - good outcomes.

Fishing boats and crofters cottages

 

The furnace was in full operation today - melting salvaged Selangor pewter and forming wee boat hulls and cottages. I salvage, chop up and melt Selangor pewter objects (goblets and mugs) as they don't have lead content.

The opening photos shows four wee boats (8.5-9cm long: and the photos below show four wee cottages  (about 3-3.5cm long). You can see the imperfections on the cottages - each is cast individually in sand - hence sand textures in the metal.

The boat hulls are poured into a graphite mould I cut; and the cottages are poured into metal moulding sand. The boat sails are made from salvaged patinated copper. Some process photos follow.

The boats and cottages will make their way to Scotland and appear as part of the Pop Up Art Show in the Armadale Village Hall at the end of August.

Cloud layers, birds and floral beauty

 

The clouds, colour and light in the above photo lasted for a brief time - but what beauty in the layers and colours.

Over the last week a few birds have made their fleeting presence felt including the juvenile cormorant, king fisher on a rock and duck on a roof in the mist.

The wet weather continues resulting in dim morning light but offering droplets.

May beauty continue to uplift us.

Not much to share

 

Whilst there has been a lot going on art wise there is not a lot to share apart from completing 4 wee watercolours of and for Scotland - opening photo and other below. The watercolours will be part of the Pop Up Art Show in the Armadale Village Hall at the end of August.

I have also been working away on two more A7 sized 16 page booklets of poetry - one titled What Remains and the other Farewelling the Light. These two booklets will have a similar format to my Flow Country booklet. Each booklet includes four original fragmentary poems that are my response to four photos I took; and the photographic images are also presented in the booklet.

Preparation for the jewellery workshop is almost completed - all the tools are put aside, all the metal elements for participants cut and findings, such as jump rings, leather necklaces and earring hooks, packed. 

More preparation for the jewellery workshop

 

As you can see from the image above I had completed some examples of the type of jewellery participants in my Scotland workshop could make.

The following images enable one to see a bit more of the detail; including where I have cropped the image of the flower pendant and the slightly hull shaped earrings. 

The cropped images show how the pieces could look if participants use the hard nail polish to colour the pieces. I particularly like how the design on the silver-plate shows through the red polish!!!

I have also developed a two page document that introduces the participants to the tools they will use. As part of the workshop I will talk the participants through the two pages and demonstrate how the tools are used. Some edits yet to be done on the document!!!

I am pretty close to finishing the preparation for this workshop.