Inside and out

 

As you can see from the last couple of photos in this blog post this morning was dark and misty - ok for walking initially not so good for iPhoneography. 

So before heading out I took some photos of a few of the little art installations Fiona puts together in our kitchen, dining and lounge room. I played with the iPhone settings to create some staged slightly arty images.

By the time I walked I could take a few photos; but again using the setting I used for the indoor photos - I quite like how they turned out.

And as I promised at the start of the post - here are a couple of images of the dark and misty morning.

Beauty takes quite a few different forms!!!

This and that

 

In the lead up to our upcoming trip to the cottage in Scotland I'm busily making product for the Pop Up Art Show in the Armadale village hall (29 and 30 August). 

I want to take a set or two of my fungi form bowls with me. These would be similar to the trio in the opening image. However, I sold the last set this week - so back to the workshop to start making another couple of sets.

As you can see from the photos below I have selected, marked up and cut circles - a good start made. I'm using salvaged silver-plated brass metal from round placemats.

Scotland inspired postcard sized watercolours will also feature in the Pop Up Art Show. On Thursday I managed to finish a couple as you can see from the photos below. 

The barn in the first watercolour is located in Strathy and at the time I took the photo for the watercolour the barn was surrounded by gorse in full bloom hence the rich yellow!!!

I know that jumping from one task to another will be a feature of my art making over the next few weeks - but it is good to be creating and also have a purpose in mind.

Preparation for jewellery making in Scotland

 

When at the cottage Scotland I hope to make some pendants and earrings from the rolled recycled silver that I rescued from one of my batches of melting silver offcuts and objects that folk had given to me for recycling. See this blog post about melting the salvaged and gifted silver.

As you can see from the photo below of a couple of pages of my journal I had sketched out some ideas for making saw pierced jewellery. 

And as you can see from the opening photo I have scribed images onto the metal and drilled the starter holes at relevant points through which the saw blade will be threaded. I also gave the metal a bit of a trim and ground the sharp edges off. You can see the rough metal in the image below.

So the plan is that I should be able to saw the image lines either in the micro Scotland workshop (aka garden shed); or if it is too cold the work might get done at the kitchen table. At least I have prepared the metal to give this idea a go.

Stars, blossoms and moon in the morning.

One of the pleasures of a clear cold winter morning is the stars glowing in the low morning light as you can see from the photo above and below.

On my morning walk I was a bit surprised to see that there are still quite a few beautiful blossoms despite the winter.

On Monday morning I was surprised to see a beautiful saucer moon fragment before and during early sunrise.

Yes there are still fragments of beauty to shine a little hope and joy on this broken world.

A tale of two batches of metal

 

In the future I hope to start a new line of jewellery using salvaged silver that has been melted and rolled into strips about 1-1.2mm thick.

Whilst giving Fiona a bit of a hand with a couple of her experiments I decided to melt a second batch of silver objects I had been gifted - earrings, bangle, chain etc. I was melting the metal in my electric furnace. I set the temperature at 930 degrees to see if the metal would melt at that point. See below  very hot furnace with molten metal in the graphite crucible.

I poured the metal into the metal form you can see sitting on top of the furnace to warm it up. It poured well. But when It came to cutting the metal it simple shattered as you can see from the opening photo. And when Fiona tried to put a piece through the metal roller it just turned into particles as you can see in the photo below.

I have no idea why the metal just turned to a crystaline form. It has happened to me a couple of times in the past. All I can think is that some of the silver metal objects gifted to me must have had impurities that causes the metal to change character when mixed with other salvaged metal.

Fortunately I had done a silver metal melt earlier and when I cut that metal into strips it rolled well - quite hard but able to be used in the future work. Some annealing and rolled metal photos follow. The metal strips when rolled went from 50mm to over 100mm.

It just reinforces that using salvaged metal is always a bit of a lotto as one can never be guaranteed of the quality of the material. 

I re-melted the shattered metal and turned it into stars!!!! See below - a lot of colourful impurities!!!

I'm liking a couple of these

 

I have 4 new postcard sized Scotland inspired watercolours on the go. I'm particularly like the one in the opening image and the one following. For some reason they are coming together a little better.  The opening watercolour is of a small barn near Bettyhill; whereas the following watercolours is of a disused boat shed over Tongue way. I like the patches of bright yellow-orange lichen on the barn. The soft grey weathered timber boat shed sits quietly in the landscape.

Following are some progress images. 

I hope to finish these four in the next week.

Sneaky peeky insects and other fragments

 

It makes me smile to see insects going about their business and enhancing the beauty of the flowers as you can see in the opening and following photo.

In this blog post there are other fragments from the week including: rainbow around the moon, sunrise and sunset beauty, cormorant and platypus by and in the creek and a single feather that drifted down

Rainbow around the moon

Sunrise and sunset

Cormorant and platypus 

Drifting feather

Such a variety of beauty to enhance the days.