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.

Workshop outcomes

 

Just before I came away I, with Fiona's much skilled assistance, did a 2.5-3 hour playing with metal workshop with a visiting family (mum, dad and teenage son). 

After having talking about options we might fit into 2-3hours they all said - "all of the above" which included: making a small bowl; making a copper leaf; and pouring and stamping a couple of metal forms (hearts and hulls). 

From the photo above and those below you can see we had a very motivated and quite skilled family group; and achieved some good outcomes.

The photos of the work bench rightly indicates that they all got exposed to a few different tools.

Fiona and I love it when we see the smiles of achievement on the faces at the end of these play workshops; and hopefully every now and then one person gets inspired to take it further.

Market product

 

Over the last few days I have been stamping, melting and pouring metal as I worked on completing 20 more fishing boats. More on the boats at a later date. 

The photo above and below show a few images of the stamped hearts. I do love the rainbow and gold colouring the back of some of the hearts.

I want to complement the heart forms with other shapes and weights including stars, rectangles and button sized pieces as you can see below.

I think I have poured enough shapes no. All these will head to Scotland later this year for sale at a couple of markets.

Go gently hearts

 

One of Fiona and my sayings for 2023 is "go gently" - encouraging ourselves and others to be kind to ourselves, kind to our minds and move through the world more slowly, quietly without judging ourselves too much.

I made probably about 15-20 metal metal hearts with "go gently" stamped on the back. These have been gifted to folk over the last few months.

I decided that I would make another stash to have in reserve as give aways particularly when we return home from Scotland.

I tend to do a metal (pewter) melt when I'm in the workshop doing other tasks. Each time I get to pour about 4-5 hearts of two sizes. 

By adding a few brass offcuts to the mix I fluke it sometimes and get a pour that has a gold sheen and even a purple dot where the pour is finished. This blog post just shares some images from a few of those pours.

Whilst I have quite a few hearts in the tool box draw I will make s few more over the next week.

The hearts will get stamped with "go gently" when I return from Scotland.

Transforming

 

During the week, and again today, I have been finishing some melted metal work. Whilst I love the colours that developed on the back of the cross form above; I love the story behind the pendant and earrings below.

I occasionally get asked to rework some family item (silver-plated objects, trays etc); often because folk don't want to keep cleaning big trays etc. But this last request gave me much joy as the friend wanted a silver object that belonged to her dead husband transformed into a heart pendant - a beautiful wearable memory piece. I was also to transform a broken gold chain and odd bits of silver earrings into gold/silver earrings. The outcome above was received with much joy by the owner.

The crosses, hearts and ingots below were being ground and polished to go to DEP shop. I poured the extremely hot melted silver-plated brass into cold moulds - I think the sudden change of temperature resulted in air-pockets and rainbow colours on the underside of the metal.

I rejoice when I get those happy accidents.

Time to have a heart

 

In these times it is important that we are able to have a heart and reach out to folks - individuals and refuges - including those from Afghanistan; but also hold on to love for ourselves.

I have been making a few melted metal hearts from my silver-plated offcuts. Usually I make hearts that are more for holding in one's hand or as a small sculptural reminder beside the computer or in some special place in one's home. But I have decided to make some pendants - thinner than the sculptural ones. As you can see from the opening photo and that below, I have ended up with 5 including two that feature the base side of the pour. Fiona gave one a test run to see how it would hang.

The metal is poured into graphite moulds such as that below.

I have finished grinding and polishing 6 more sculptural hearts as you can see from the photos below.

It takes quite a while to grind the rough poured hearts and then polish them. A heart with a hole through it to let the love and light in is shown below.

As part of the metal melts I also pour other bits and trim bits from hearts. The pieces below are rough but will become gorgeous earrings,  pendants etc.