WOYWW 487–Boxes and Leaves

Where does the time go? Another Wednesday has rolled around in what feels like 24 hours, all ready for another desk fest, and we are now into October!

Here is my desk as of Tuesday evening.

I have made good progress on my two boxes this week. They are now assembled, and in the above photo, the lids are just laid on top. I have yet to make flaps for the lids, and hinges for them, and also I was awaiting the arrival of some metal embellishments that I’d bought on Ebay, which came on Monday.

I may not use the corners on these boxes because I’m not sure they will work with the lid design I’ve chosen, and the feet have their own corners on them. The handles are a little bit smaller than I’d hoped, and I may not use these either on this project, but the two clasps I bought are absolutely gorgeous and will definitely be used. The rest can be kept in reserve for other projects as they are always useful to have in. All these metal fittings came with numerous small screws or pins for attaching them, but using them on mounting board boxes, I shall attach them with brads instead, and also use some glue.

To see what else I’ve done, you can see my previous post here, and in the meantime, here’s a shot of the finished decoration on the insides of the boxes.

Crochet

I’ve made a few more leaves for embellishing my striped scarf.

These are a bit larger than the previous ones, from another lovely pattern on Youtube. You can’t see very clearly in this picture but the design incorporates some decorative holes. They are fun to do now I’ve stopped getting lost with the pattern and forgetting to turn the work, and ending up with something looking distinctly un-leaf-like! They are nice to do when I’m resting with my feet up.

Cooking

Not a lot of activity in the kitchen this week because I’ve been really tired, having been burning the candle at both ends recently and needing to step back a bit and rest. I made more sourdough at the weekend, though.

I’m getting generally consistent results these days and I’m quite pleased with my loaves, but I’d like them to rise a bit higher. Nice open crumb, though, and a lovely flavour and texture. The only trouble is, the loaf doesn’t last the week! Sourdough keeps much better than regular bread but we do get through it rather quickly! It is time consuming to make, not involving a great deal of work, but I have to be here to attend to it regularly throughout a whole day. I’m not set up for making larger quantities so I think I’m going to have to go back to making normal bread in between, so we don’t run out!

Kitties

Only pictures of Ruby this week – sitting comfortably on my hubby’s chair…

…until he decided he wanted to sit down, so he bundled her up in order to dump her on my lap!

Lily was upstairs on the bed. Earlier this evening, my hubby told me they had a bit of a spat, fighting and swearing at each other. It was apparently mostly Lily, and we have no idea what brought it on, but perhaps Ruby was doing something to irritate her sister? A bit of sibling rivalry, no doubt. Fortunately everything was soon quite all right again. They really love each other and are usually together. We are getting tremendous kitty choruses at feeding time now the weather is getting colder and they are getting very hungry!

Health Update

I cancelled two things on Sunday because I was so tired. My activity level has crept up quite a bit lately, which is good in a way because it does prove I’ve got a bit more energy these days (I put this down to my change of diet and especially the inclusion of the fermented foods) but I was getting to the stage when I was starting to feel a bit desperate because I was so busy. This also meant that for months I’ve hardly had any time to spend in the studio, and getting back to that again just recently has shown me just how much I was missing it, and how much I need to be making art. As a result I have decided to cut back on some of my activities in order to take the pressure off a bit.

Regarding my ongoing gut problems, I don’t think there’s any doubt now that my hernia has returned. It seems to have grown over the past week, and I can now see it and it’s quite large. This is reassuring from one standpoint, because at least it’s not as likely to cause an obstruction as a small one, according to my surgeon. On Monday I had a lot of trouble with my stoma as a result, having to change the bag twice because of leaks, but I think that may have been my fault. To provide a bit more support, I decided to wear two pairs of worn-out support pants instead of the one. They certainly did feel nice and supportive but perhaps they were exerting too much pressure and stopping things working properly. I’ve gone back to one pair again and so far, so good! Hopefully the first of the new set of pants will arrive soon, and if they fit OK, I can order the remaining two pairs straight away. If I get further problems in advance of my CT scan on 18th, I shall make an appointment to see the stoma nurse and ask her to sort something out for me and maybe arrange for me to see my surgeon asap. The last thing I want is further surgery. It’s all very disappointing because it means that I went through all that terrible experience in the spring for nothing.

Have a great week, everyone.

Box for Floral Mini-Album–Box Construction 2: Constructing the Lid

WOYWW readers: Please scroll down to previous post.

I made a small amount of progress on my boxes today, working on the pieces for the lids. I had to cut side panels and a front panel so that the lid would be secure when closed. I wasn’t able to get on with this until the metal embellishments arrived from Ebay.

Cutting the pieces from mounting board for the sides and front of the lids:

I ended up having to redo these (at least it was before I had cut the fancy edges for the fronts) because I hadn’t allowed a little extra for the overlap, and when I made a mock-up using masking tape, the pieces weren’t long enough to cover the sides of the box. Adding 1/8 in on each length was enough.

Once they were cut to length, I made a cardstock pattern (seen on the right in the above photo) to create a fancy shaped edge to the flap on the front of the lid, to which the clasp will be attached.

Painting the pieces:

I painted all the pieces, front and back, and along all the edges, with black acrylic paint.

I have not decided whether to try and match the insides with the inside of the box – the contrasting black may look quite nice, but on the other hand it might give a more professional finish if it matches.

I have also made some more of the connecting pieces to attach the side flaps to the lid, but also need to make some small ones to join the two front corners of the lid flaps. Before I assemble the lid, I shall attach the clasp and cut and apply some of my background papers to all the lid pieces, and also to the box itself. I still haven’t decided whether or not to use any of the metal corners. Decisions, decisions…!

Box for Floral Mini-Album–Continuing to Work on the Insides

Having painted one side of the box pieces with black acrylic, today I painted the edges and a border around the other side of each piece, ready for matting later.

After this I began embellishing the black surface which will be the inside of the box. I wanted to try Angela’s (Felix the Crafty Cat) technique to produce an interesting texture: she scrumpled up some waxed paper and then unfolded it, and ironed it onto some card, which made a gorgeous pattern in wax on the paper, which was revealed when she applied some Distress Oxides with a blending tool, the wax pattern acting as a resist.

Unfortunately it didn’t work for me. I have a roll of freezer paper that I thought was waxed, but however long I ironed it, very little came off onto the card. Afterwards I read the label on the box and it said “plastic coated” so obviously this was why it didn’t work. I tried with some scraps of what I thought was waxed paper that I’ve saved for other purposes, mostly the backing sheets of self-adhesive labels and things like that, but had no more success with these than with the freezer paper, so I gave it up as a bad job. I shall contact Angela and ask where she got her waxed paper!

I proceeded to apply Worn Lipstick and Seedless Preserves Distress Oxides to the black painted surface of the mount board, using Inkylicious Ink Dusters and then spritzing the pieces with water and drying them with my heat gun. I am quite pleased with the result.

I shall tear up the strips taken from the music table napkins and apply those with gel medium, and add more inks and possibly some gilding flakes and spatters, building up the layers until I am happy with the result.

Not a bad evening’s work for today, and I hope to do a bit more tomorrow.

WOYWW 478

Yayyy! This week I made ART! Here is what is on my desk today – the results of my labours on Monday.

For the first time in about six weeks I managed to make something in the studio. After finishing the two copies of the Floral Mini-Album about Mum, I wanted to make boxes for them, but only managed to finish the albums before going into hospital in March to have my hernia operation. Mum’s friend, the recipient of one of the albums, told us that at present, she is keeping her album safe in a biscuit tin! We are meeting up with her on Thursday but unfortunately I haven’t had time to finish her box.

On the left of the photo is the mock-up I made of the first box some weeks ago, from mount board and masking tape.

On Monday I got out what was left of the awful paper stack I used to make the album, that I was able to improve so much with lots of ink etc., and selected a few sheets to be used to cover the box. I am so glad I didn’t throw that paper away because it’s amazing the transformation you can bring about with some Distress Inks, Distress Oxides and Infusions, after which it becomes really quite useful!

This is the only one that I photographed with the original unaltered sheet because I had several sheets of this.

Here are the others.

All these 12 x 12 sheets are pretty wrinkled as a result of being so wet – when using Infusions particularly, they need a lot of spritzing with water. However, once they are ironed, they should be much better, and failing that I can leave them under a pile of heavy books for a while.

I haven’t got enough of any one colour to make the two boxes identical, but it doesn’t matter.

I need to get some metal corners and some feet, and possibly some sort of a clasp for the lid, and I need to decide exactly how I am going to embellish them, but they will be something like the front cover of the albums, probably.

I have now resumed uploading the blog posts about the construction of the mini-album after a bit of a break. I am keen to get this completed now, but I’ve been so busy with other things lately that it’s got a bit neglected. You can scroll down to see the latest ones if you are interested.

Also in my studio this week is more chaos, because someone we know who collects and sells old sheet music has recently had a clear-out and has offloaded a box of his rejects onto me as I said I might be able to use some music paper in art. I had no idea there’d be so much.

At the bottom of the box were 6 large volumes of Scottish songs from the 1800s – beautiful books, far too nice to throw away, but I may be able to alter them and use them for art journaling etc., keeping some of the pages unaltered as there are plates of beautiful Scottish scenery and people in Highland dress etc., and the dedication page is to “Her Majesty Queen Victoria.”

I have also got all that wonderful craft stuff a friend gave me a few weeks ago, still not sorted and put away properly. I’ve got far too much stuff in the room and I’m getting a bit swamped at the moment! I need to have a serious blitz and get tidied up a bit.

Following on from a couple of times recently when a book and a memory were restored to me, in amongst all that music was a book of elementary piano pieces for children on a sea theme called “Sea Idylls” which I used to play when I was a child! I just had to keep that. I loved those pieces, and so nice to have a copy again, even if I haven’t got a piano to play them on, and even if I could remember how to play the piano!! (I shall have to get my musical friend to give me lessons…) There seem to be quite a few lovely things from my past, coming back into my life again at the moment.

Kitties

More fun and games with Lily and Ruby. They’ve both gone off the trolley completely now, and I’ve managed to persuade Ruby that sleeping right outside the bedroom door isn’t a good idea or she risks getting trodden on. At the weekend they discovered the kitty hammock in the sitting room, and once they are in from the garden, this is where they make a bee-line. They snuggle up together so happily in there. There’s a bit more room than on the trolley, and it’s a lot more comfortable (being designed with kitties in mind). They won’t know what’s hit them when winter comes and the heating is on!

See this post for full details and lots of pictures!

Meantime:

As usual, Ruby has something of herself draped over her sister.

Sunday morning:

Love those tails!!

They have NOT enjoyed the sudden change in the weather and I’ve told them that life isn’t all sunshine and butterflies but into each life, a little rain must fall! They are still dashing out when they get the chance but they don’t like the rain.

Lily watching blood and gore, violence and death on TV before the 9 o’clock watershed.

Food

Last weekend I made my best sourdough bread yet. Details in the same post from the other day. Slightly reduced hydration which made the dough a bit easier to handle, but not much!

The texture is still a bit dense but if I increase the hydration again just a bit, I should get some nice glossy holes. This time I did a lot more proper stretching and folding, and this gave the dough more structure and it didn’t collapse when I turned it out onto the baking sheet. The two small loaves rose very well. I shall attempt some more this weekend.

Esmeralda (my sourdough starter) went completely bananas after I’d made the bread and fed her up again. Despite putting her back in the fridge to sleep it off for the week, I found her erupting all over the place when we got back from church on Sunday morning. It looks positively geological, doesn’t it.

She got reduced again and I cleaned out her jar, and since then she’s behaved very well. What I took out has been made into some more crackers (not too successful as I rolled them out too thick, but I’ll do better next time).

On Friday we are going to our friend’s for another Shabbat (Jewish Sabbath) meal, for which I’ve offered to make the challah again. This delicious pair of plaited loaves is traditional and always goes down a treat. It’s enriched with egg and is quite sweet, and very soft and scrumptious, perfect served with a sprinkling of salt in the traditional way. We are out for lunch with Mum’s friend on Thursday so I’ve got to fit this in somehow. However, it’s not nearly so critical as sourdough when it comes to proving times so I can safely go out and leave it.

Shopping

Last Thursday my hubby took me shopping in Totnes, which used to be our nearest shopping town, and full of ethnic and hippie shops which I love – all my favourite sort of clothes! I bought a few more things and told my hubby that I’d better not go back for a while or I won’t have any money left!! We only did the top bit of the town. It’s extremely inaccessible for wheelchairs or buggies because the street is very narrow, with tiny narrow pavements, and the hill is extremely steep, and all the shops have steps and narrow doorways, but it is soooo gorgeous!

In one shop we found a lot of fabulous stuff from Bali, and I simply couldn’t resist buying this trio of little carved and painted wooden cats.

We went into a whole food shop run by an Indian lady and I got chatting with her about kefir because I wondered if she’d like to take my excess kefir grains off my hands. She was very interested and said that several customers had asked if she sold kefir starter kits. I said she could have the grains and I didn’t want anything for them, and arranged that my friend (who came over yesterday) would probably be willing to drop them in for me as she lives just round the corner from there, and she is going to do that for me. While we were in there, another old friend that I don’t see much of these days, came in – so well met! She invited us back to tea at her house after we’d all finished our shopping, and we sat on her patio under the big umbrella, enjoying the sunshine and catching up. It was so nice!

So it’s been another busy week. In between I’ve tried to rest. Yesterday I was fighting off a major headache all day, which was probably brought on by a combination of doing too much, and a change in the weather.

At least I got back in the studio a bit this week.

Some Exciting News! Imminent Arrival of a New Kitty!

---but not one to make Beatrice and Phoebe jealous!!

For some time now I’ve been getting increasingly fed up with my Cricut. First of all, I was really hacked off over the court case between Provocraft (the manufacturer of the Cricut cutting machine) and the designers of the excellent software Make the Cut (and subsequently, I believe, SCAL) which meant you could no longer design your own cut files and cut them with this machine. I was OK because I had the old firmware, but anyone updating the firmware, or buying a new machine, would be stuck with the very expensive Cricut cartridges only, and no possibility of cutting their own designs.

That’s absolutely fine for a lot of people who are more than happy to cut other people’s designs, and more power to them – at least they can cut different shapes and continue to make their cards and other projects, but for many of us, that is far from being enough. I’ve had a taste of designing my own stuff and wouldn’t want to give that up.

Also, as usual with any of my technology, I push it to the limits and make huge demands on it! I have been finding that cutting simple shapes is no longer enough for me. I want to be able to cut small and intricate pieces, and more complex designs and projects, and quite honestly, the Cricut is simply not up to the job. What brought it to a head was when I made the Christmas roses for my altered boxes – I used Penny Duncan’s lovely Christmas rose pattern, and on her superb instructional video, she showed how beautifully her Black Cat Lynx cutter had coped with the delicate centres of the flowers – not a single “spoke” was torn. I was really jealous of this! She’s been singing the praises of her wonderful new machine for a while now. When I attempted to cut these flower centres with the Cricut, less than half the spokes survived. I had to print Penny’s pdf file and cut them out by hand.

My hubby was in my ARTHaven the other day when I was cutting something, and he could see that the result was far from perfect. I’ve been moaning about it for a while in his hearing, but didn’t think he was that interested or even listening to my ramblings!

The lack of accuracy and cleanness of cut leaves much to be desired. For example, in the spring, when I made Wonderwoman’s mother’s 70th birthday card, when I cut the window for the box lid, I cut a second window in the box lid lining so that I could sandwich a sheet of acetate between the two layers, and the cut was “out” by about 1/8 inch when I came to align the layers. I had to trim the aperture in the lining, and cover the inside edge with a narrow gold peel-off strip, which actually finished it off nicely, but that wasn’t the point!!

Another example. I designed an svg file of a “bracket” style frame a while back, and used this to embellish the box I made a couple of days ago for my mum’s Christmas present, cutting it in the silver card.

Superficially I suppose it’s OK, but examine it closely and the inaccuracy of the Cricut cut is revealed.

The two paths of the cut file for the frame have moved out of alignment during the cut, making the frame slightly asymmetrical. Also the cut itself is not quite clean, having a ragged edge, and this despite having a new blade in the machine.

I brought the finished box downstairs and showed my hubby, and pointed these deficiencies out to him. Despite my thinking he hadn’t been that interested, he’d obviously taken on board what I’d been saying over the past few months, because he said, “I think you should just go ahead and get that new machine.” I couldn’t believe my ears! Music to them, in fact. I felt I now had “permission” to go ahead and invest in a new machine that I knew would do what I wanted.

When Penny got her Lynx I was very impressed indeed, but looking at the details, I decided it was worth getting the higher spec machine, the Cougar, which will cut much thicker material than the Lynx. For a long time I’ve wanted to be able to cut shapes from mounting board (mat board) which is far too thick for the Cricut, and quite impossible to cut anything complicated by hand. I thought I would eventually get this machine, but when my hubby said that, and with the frustration I’ve been feeling of late, I decided to bite the bullet and go for it!!

A few days ago I signed up for the UK Black Cat forum and had a browse around, and read what people on there, and elsewhere on the net, have been saying about the machine and its capabilities. Having searched extensively, I have to agree with one person who said they hadn’t been able to find a single negative review of this machine anywhere online. It’s beautifully engineered, heavy, sturdily built to enable it to cut with the pressure needed, functional, metal not plastic, built to last and will do what I require it to do. It is not tied to any particular software or cartridges – in fact it was designed with people like us in mind, who want to do our own thing and do it well, without any hassle.

So… yesterday afternoon I put down a deposit on a Black Cat Cougar cutting machine! The model I want is out of stock at the moment, and apparently the new machines will be arriving later this month, and they are already selling fast, so it was suggested that I reserve one with a deposit.

If I had known then what I know now, I would not have bought the Cricut, but gone straight for the Cougar. However, I didn’t know, and at the time the Cricut seemed a big enough investment. As an entry level machine it was very good, particularly as I was still able to cut my own designs with it, but since then I feel I have moved on and require something more sophisticated. I am hoping to be able to sell the Cricut; it has an embossing kit with it (hardly used) and a couple of cartridges (not used, apart from the fact you have to have a cartridge in the machine in order to make it work at all).

I’ll keep you posted about when my new kitty arrives! I’m very excited about it! Meantime, it’s back to the forum, and Youtube, to learn as much as I can about it before it comes. It’s a sharp learning curve and not for the faint hearted but it will be well worth the effort, to have such a superb tool at my fingertips.

Here, kitty, kitty, kitty!! GRRRRRR. Big FIERCE kitty! Cut that out!! Lol!

Rust!

Those of you who regularly keep an eye on what Shoshi is up to will know she has a thing for rust…

On our recent trip to the eastern side of Plymouth sound, the family thought I had gone completely mad, drooling over the rusty armoured gun ports at Bovisand Fort, and taking endless photographs!

I love the texture and the amazing range of colours you get from all forms of decay and corrosion. Entropy is the artist’s best friend!!!

Recently I have been thinking about decorating some more Ikea mirrors – you may remember this one I did for Wonderwoman’s 50th birthday in April (This was my first effort at flower painting with this particular technique, and now that I’ve had some more practice, I’m not that happy with that mirror!!)

I am certainly going to do some more flower paintings, but I was thinking also of doing some textured gesso art, and that got me thinking about other textures, and something much more grungey which might be of more interest to the menfolk, and I thought I’d try my hand at some steampunk. I’ve been exploring various Youtube tutorials on getting a realistic rust effect, and as I was unwilling to invest in yet more materials to create just one effect, I wondered if I could create some rust with materials I’ve already got, so on went Shoshi’s thinking cap…

These are the materials I came up with that I thought would work well for this project.

This is what I’ve come up with.

As usual, the photograph hasn’t done it justice because anything metallic or iridescent is always hard to capture accurately.

The steps I took to achieve this effect were as follows.

I took one of my ATC-sized pieces of mounting board which had already been prepped with white gesso, and I added two coats of black gesso, drying in between. The white gesso isn’t necessary, but it was already done, so I just painted over it.

On top of this I painted a layer of Daler Rowney Pearlescent Liquid Acrylic in Galactic Blue.

Actually this was bluer than I wanted but it was all I had – when I repeat this effect I’m going to make up an acrylic glaze which is much more greeny-turquoise in colour, mixed with iridescent gel medium, to give a verdigris effect. Before it was dry, I spritzed it with a little water to make it a bit patchy, and dried it with my heat gun, which moved the liquid around on the surface a bit.

When it was dry, I applied some coarse pumice acrylic gel medium with a palette knife, not covering the whole ATC but deliberately making it patchy and uneven, and avoiding the very edges of the card. I scraped at it quite hard too, which made some nice striations in the surface of the card in places. I dried this with my heat gun.

I then applied a mixture of dark brown and orange fluid acrylics with a brush, mixing the colour until I was satisfied that it was good and rusty, and working it well into the texture of the pumice medium, but not covering the whole card; some of the blue was still visible around the edges. Again, I dried this with my heat gun.

Next I painted on a very small quantity of copper metallic acrylic paint – that is gorgeous stuff!! – not overdoing this, but catching the texture of the pumice medium.

After drying this with my heat gun, I applied a thin layer of semi-gloss soft acrylic gel medium with a brush, to seal the surface, and again dried it with my heat gun.

I found that this had dulled the surface a little too much, so the final touch was to rub a small quantity of Treasure Copper (like Rub ‘n Buff but in a pot rather than in a tube) over the textured surface which brought back a dull lustre.

I am extremely pleased with the result!

Here is the video of the tutorial on how to create this faux rust effect.

I am delighted that I did not have to buy a specific rust-effect product, and I now know that I can replicate this effect on a larger scale, and decorate some mirrors, and possibly alter some boxes too. I shall add some castings of gear wheels and other steampunk junk to embellish the surface, and maybe dangle some charms from chains etc.

I’ve recently started making silicone rubber moulds in order to make charms and embellishments (I shall be posting about that soon) and I’m hoping to be able to produce many different ones in different media such as polymer clay, UTEE and Friendly Plastic.

The other day I saw an awesome video tutorial on Youtube, on how to make embellishments out of shrink plastic onto which you have first applied embossing powder. You heat the shrink plastic shape with a heat gun and as it shrinks, it also melts the embossing powder and you end up with amazing thick embossing! Can’t wait to try that.

I am thinking of delving into my tool box and finding some nuts and bolts and screw heads, and making castings of those, to add to these projects. Once I’ve got a mould, I can make as many as I want, and they will be lighter and easier to deal with than real metal. I want to be able to create this sort of effect – another of my juicy rusty Bovisand Fort photos:

When my hubby saw the sample I’d made, he tried out his metal detector on it, and nothing happened!! Very surprising…! Obviously the metallic particles in the materials I used were not metal at all, but most likely mica powders or something like that.

I have had Such Fun with this!!! Is there anything more fun than developing new techniques and creating new things, and Simply Messing About with Paints?