The beauty of droplets and a couple of bumble bees

 

We had light overnight rain that coated blossoms and leaves in beautiful clear droplets. I have always been captivated by crystal like droplets and often try to capture the beauty on the iPhone.

This post is a celebration of the beauty of droplets.

Whilst taking droplet photos a bumble bee was having a fine time collecting nectar from the rosemary flowers.

It brings me joy to find droplets in clear light so they can be celebrated.

Cottages and salvaged timber

 

In keeping with my wee cottage earring theme I/we have decided it would be fun to make some small timber cottages out of salvaged timber. You can see from the opening and following photo I have cut some from a block of birch. Fiona and I have discussed the possibility of charring these.

Following are forms cut from salvaged and worn timber. We have discussed the possibility of applying and sanding back some paint on these.

When we were at Loch Fine we found a piece timber from a boat that was on the shore. We think the timber is red cedar. I have used part of the timber to make a quirky cheese board. 

And talking of cottages - the northern wall of the cottage has been sealed with a coat of micro seal paint. The paint also covers a very poor harling job done in the past.

Hopefully in a couple of weeks I will be able to share photos of completed small cottages.

Few more wee watercolours on the go

 

Last Thursday I started 4 postcard sized watercolours of building in our area - process-progress photos follow further in the blog post. 

This Thursday I managed to all but finish one and got the second one well on the way as you can see from the opening photos.

Process-progress - from sketch to base coats  and finishing the small corrugated iron building. Process starts from the bottom and finishes with the image with the plate-pallet.

Base coats...

Sketches outlined with light inks

Pencil sketches....

I will be away from the studio aka kitchen table next Thursday so I probably won't get back to working on these pieces for a couple of weeks. I'm enjoying seeing aside the time to do this work whilst in the cottage.

Back window sunset and rosemary bumble bee

The sunset seen from the top west facing window of the cottage last night was beautiful - such layers of colour; and of course such beautiful silhouettes of bush twigs, gorse and the fenceline.

The photo below shows the plum tree blossom, assemblage sculpture and daffodils out the back.

We were given a potted rosemary bush by our neighbour; and it is full of soft purple blossom. Apparently the bumble bees love the blossoms. As you can see from the photos below this bumble bee just worked over the whole bush - difficult to keep track of it.

So much beauty to fascinate and uplift one.

Slight new direction

 

Given we are in the cottage I have been inspired to try to make some solid silver wee cottage earrings - see the initial designs in the sketches below. This work will include quite a bit of delicate sawing with a jewellers saw. Two hand cut cottages on slate are in the opening photo - bit of filing and sanding yet to be done. The wee cottages are about 10-11mm wide.

I needed to mark up the silver with a very fine pen but was not sure what would work - needs to be permanent and not smudge when cutting. I tested a range of pens on one of our stainless steel kitchen knives as you can see below.

In the end I thought Fiona's Uni pin .05 pen below would work best. It did mark up ok but did also smudge a bit. The cutting this time was done at the kitchen table - cutting vee clamped to the table. I think I will try a Copic pen next.

Fiona asked if our kitchen knife would ever be the same - after a bit of a scrub with stainless steel cleaner it was as good as.

Over the next while I will make some stamps out of nails to use to create the windows, doors and texture on the roof - all part of a work in progress????

Take a block of wood...

 

One of my goals for this trip to the cottage is to whittle-carve a few wee birds. I tested my ability to saw a block of wood using hand held saws before I left home.  Over the last couple of days I have worked on my first cottage bird and by this afternoon I had got the bird to a point where it needs a bit more fine sanding and oiling as you can see in the opening photo.

The following photos show the process of sawing a wedge of birch.

Once I had cut a couple of blocks to the required size I marked up one of the blocks and used a cheap and dodgy coping saw the cut a rough bird shape. I have ordered a quality coping saw for future bird projects.

After giving the rough form a sand I used one of our wood carving knives I brought over from our Maleny home to carve a better shape in preparation for hand sanding.

As I said in the opening paragraph my next steps are to finish the sanding the bird in the opening photo and then oil the bird.