A start and a finish

 

As a result of the Pop Up Art Show I have a couple of watercolour commissions. I have made a small start on one piece that will become an 80th birthday gift. A wee white cottage with bits and pieces along the front wall. See photo above and below.

I have also completed the sixth wee comfort bird. It just looked gorgeous with the sun shining on it through the workshop window. See images below.

Now that thePop Up Art Show is complete I hope to make a good start on my pierced recycled silver jewellery.

Then there were five

 

I have been able to spend a couple of sessions in the Micro Workshop aka garden shed making wee timber birds.

As you can see from the opening photo I have now completed 5 birds. The deep red bird is made from red cedar; the striped bird from camphor laurel and the others from jacaranda timber. Following are some photos of the birds on rocks and rust.

A few photos of the making process. The making involves a lot of patient sanding to finesse the shape and finish.

Ending with another photo of the striped bird and its friend on a rock.

Finishing a couple of little birds

 

Before leaving our Maleny home I roughly cut some timber bird forms. I got the time to finish a couple in the Micro Workshop aka garden shed. The opening photo shows the red cedar wee comfort bird sitting on the window sill in the lounge room.

A few process photos follow.

A couple more images of the finished birds follow. They have been sanded and oiled.

Over the next couple of weeks I hope to finish a few more birds in preparation for the Pop Up Art Show in the Armadale Village Hall on 29 and 30 August - 11am to 4pm each day

Birds in the rough

 

I have decided to take some partially made wee birds with me to the cottage so that I can finish them over there.

As you can see from the opening photo I managed to saw and roughly sand 6 wee birds. Some of the process photos follow.  Cutting some blocks; and marking them up using a cardboard template.

This is the first time I have used my small band saw to cut the bird shapes.

Finally another photo of the six birds that are cottage bound. I will be leaving a few home for working on later.

Birds, bowl and ampersand

 

As you can see from the opening photo I have finally finished the three comfort birds I started some weeks ago. They are so individual in terms of timber and shapes. Size and shape is often determined by the variation in the sawing, whittling sanding processes. For me the important thing is how they finally feel in the hand - and these three feel different but good. Some process photos follow. The birds are oiled with Lemon Myrtle eco oil.

A person wanted to purchase one of my larger (about 110mm in diameter) Starburst Bowls to hold some simple metal stamped daily words. Though the bowl could rest on its side and hold the words I thought a simple stand made out of a piece of 50mm in diameter copper tube would offer an alternate way of holding the words. The bowl and stand are shown in the photo below - I like the look. It is now packed and ready to be posted to its new home on Monday.

As part of our art studio garage sale I sold most of the silicone moulds I used for casting cement pieces. Of course one of the moulds we couldn't leave go was that used for casting ampersands. I decided to buy a small amount of two-pack resin and do a test cast of a resin ampersand. As you can see from the photo below it is looking good at this stage. It is slow curing resin so won't be dry for 24 hours.

There are days when doing a bit of this and that reminds one of the joy of unstructured creating.