1 Dec 2017

Christmas giveaways and free digital papers

Christmas is doing a little something extra for someone.  

Looking at the date of my last post I’m mortified at how tardy I have been lately.  I have hundreds of photographs downloaded to work through and some are still in the camera – I really hope that I might get some free time off over Christmas to look through them and add to my gallery.

Beaded snowflake decorations, which can be removed from the ribbon and worn as a pendant,
Beaded snowflake decorations, which can be removed from the ribbon and worn as a pendant,

I haven’t exactly been idle though, I’ve recently been making some beaded snowflakes to thank my wonderful customers for their very valued support during 2017. I will be giving away a hand crafted beaded snowflake decoration on all orders over £18.

The snowflakes have been made by me using some of the fantastic new shapes of beads and each one – just like a real snowflake – is different. They come on a loop of silver ribbon to allow it to be hung as a festive decoration. But if the ribbon is removed, they have an oval silver plated jump ring which will allow it to be worn as a festive pendant on your own chain. They have been stitched robustly with the best quality of [almost] unbreakable beading thread and will last you a lifetime.

Beaded star earrings in icy colours and hanging on Sterling silver earwires.
Beaded star earrings in icy colours and hanging on Sterling silver earwires.

I also have a limited number of beaded star earrings, with Sterling silver earwires which I will give away with orders over £60. Each pair of earrings is also different.

Both items will be sent out whilst stocks last or until the last Christmas postings.

Whilst thinking about how to present the gifts to customers, I got myself totally engrossed in making some of my own digital papers for making boxes.  I blogged some time ago about how I never even knew that there was such a beast as ‘digital paper’ – the concept was totally alien to me at the time.

Free collection of 3 high resolution digital paper designs with a Christmas theme.
Free collection of 3 high resolution digital paper designs with a Christmas theme.

But since then, I started tinkering with my own designs – in conjunction with more digital drawing for the work I do with my Silhouette cutting machine – the two disciplines are symbiotic skills.  It reminded me lately of how I used to do seamless repeating background graphics for web pages – when they were rather more fashionable – and the papers use many of the same techniques I used some years ago.

All of these designs are totally unique to me – each element has been digitally drawn and used to create seamless papers that you can print out for use on your own personal projects. More details and a download link below.

Boo’s FREE Christmas digital paper collection 2017

I’ve been creating some new and entirely original digital papers on a Christmas theme and am making this small collection of 3 papers available for a FREE download.  There are 3 high res JPEG images included of Christmas themed digital papers, that can be printed out on your own printer, up to 12″ (300mm) square at 300dpi – or even larger if required.

The file is 10.7MB in size and comes as a zipped collection.  Please familiarise yourself with the content of the Read Me file included which outlines your rights to use the files freely for personal use, but requires a paid licence for any form of commercial use that will result in financial gain.

I hope you enjoy using the designs, I have more to follow and I’d love to see what you use them for.

 

 

23 May 2017

Reworking old designs and new materials

A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust.
Gertrude Jekyll

Apologies for my lack of posts, but I haven’t really had much to say.  My work recently hasn’t really been that post-worthy and I’ve not had time or opportunity to take many photos.

But today was the first that felt like proper summer (we always have a nice spell in May, followed by a sudden drop in temperature in June and you wonder where it went) and I was able to work outside for some of the time and with the door open when inside.  I always enjoy those work days the most – the open door adds more light and it’s always going to be a good thing to hear birds singing whilst you work.  If you don’t mind passing traffic in between and the loudest birds being a very noisy brood of jackdaws nesting nearby, who are clearly perpetually hungry and don’t mind who knows it.

Whilst pottering outside I checked on some of my summer panting from last weekend and it always amazes me just how quickly new plants grow at this time of year, some are already visibly bigger within a week and it’s nice to see some colour.

A double flowered Marguerite daisy with florets in a range of pinks and whites. Aren't they gorgeous.
A double flowered Marguerite daisy with florets in a range of pinks and whites. Aren’t they gorgeous.

A new flowering plant to me this summer is a double flowering Marguerite daisy – I got two, a bright pink one and a white one.  Daisies do already have tiny florets at their centre, but these are significantly larger than I’ve seen before and are more than one colour too.

I’m delighted with them and hope that the slugs and snails will decide that they don’t taste very nice.  I’m always a tad reluctant to introduce anything new, as sometimes they don’t last more than a day or two, if they find them especially yummy.  I do always have a range of daisy-like flowers as they are very much a favourite and good at attracting hover flies, which I also love to see in the garden.

Recent work:

My work recently has been more about re-working designs and making things to order.  I’ve not had as much time to work on brand new ideas as I’d like ideally.  I do however have a pile of half finished pieces and new ones awaiting the attention of my camera, so I hope more new things will appear shortly.

I’ve enjoyed working in polymer clay recently – it has felt like an age since I gave it some time.  Two new pieces are shown in the gallery below.  The copper raindrops necklace was one of my earliest designs and I recently updated the design a little, in that I went larger and heavier with it, so make it a bit more substantial.  I do find it disproportionately time-consuming to make for some reason (and this leads to the dilemma of pricing that’s both fair to the customer and myself), so I’m also looking at a more simplified version too.

The one brand new material and technique that I have tried is a faux laser cut wood for earrings and pendants.  I used the Silhouette cutter to cut several layers of each design in a faux wood paper that I already had and I laminated them together carefully, by which time they become quite robust and rigid and I’ve then waxed the surface to improve their wearability.  They do come out very light indeed, allowing the wearer the comfort to wear larger earrings than they might usually dare.

Gallery:

 

13 Mar 2017

Spring is finally visiting

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.    Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

I am delighted to see that spring has finally come knocking at my front door.  She hasn’t however just crept along timidly, hoping not to cause too much fuss, she’s banged repeatedly on the knocker and is wearing her brightest finery.  I even saw my first lambs yesterday, so that was a treat too.

It’s one of my very favourite times of year, when the usually scrubby patch of grass [read that as more moss than grass] outside our front door is solid with spring flowers.  I’m pretty sure that they’re usually more spread out, in that the snowdrops are usually past their best by the time the crocuses emerge and they then overlap with the daffodils.  But at the moment, they’re all in full bloom.  There are even daisies amongst them already.

In fact, I thought the snowdrops had taken a battering in recent storms and were certainly finishing blooming, but a whole raft of new flowers have emerged this week, so it seems that it was only the first flush that were done.  There are some, thankfully still in bud, yet to enjoy.

What could be more cheerful after a long winter than seeing this vibrant splash of colour and a bee busy at work.
What could be more cheerful after a long winter than seeing this vibrant splash of colour and a bee busy at work.

I must start keeping a record of what blooms when, as I’m sure it must vary quite a bit year on year, depending on how severe the winter weather was.  I’m also pretty certain that winters are nowhere near as severe as they used to be – I know that we get a fraction of the snow we have had in past years.

I’m not sure this is entirely good for nature, I think some species need a good hard frost as part of their cycle and I feel this may be why for the last few years, my smaller daffs, often flower just above the soil, without ever growing proper stalks and developing the height that they should.  It feels like they haven’t been allowed to sleep and then woken properly.

We had a lovely day earlier this week, when the wind finally dropped enough to try and take some photos – delicate flowers like snowdrops quiver significantly even in the slightest breeze.  I caught it just on the right day – the warm sun caused the crocuses to open wide and they were pristine and new and I was delighted to see several industrious bumble bees.  I wasted more time than was decent to try to capture one particular character who was very keen on the snowdrops, but he was a large chap and heavily laden with yellow pollen caught in his furry back (you can see him in the banner image at the top) and every time he landed on a snowdrop, his weight caused the flower to drop violently earthwards and dump him onto the grass.  He valiantly kept trying though.  The crocus shape was more suitable for him and I did manage to catch him visiting them.

Recent work and gallery:

Pink bronze earrings, initially inspired by a couple of my favourite jewellery designers; Archibald Knox and Georg Jensen. I started with an idea and before I knew it, it had taken on my own style anyway.
Pink bronze earrings, initially inspired by a couple of my favourite jewellery designers; Archibald Knox and Georg Jensen. I started with an idea and before I knew it, it had taken on my own style anyway.

My husband was working away for a few days recently and I consequently had a really exceptional time getting lots of work done. I was really in the zone and had few interruptions, so made significant inroads into my ‘to do’ list. It was a most enjoyable and satisfying time.

So I now have a pile of finished pieces and some fired metal clay components to make into something and I’m just getting them all added to the web site and for sale.

Having sold several polymer clay pieces recently, I decided that I hadn’t played with polymer clay for a while, so a session was long overdue and I already had some ideas tucked away that I wanted to try.

I decided to start simple initially, to get my eye back in and also used some old baked pieces to try carving designs into. I’d done some rudimentary carving on metal clay and to make texture plates, but carving into polymer clay is most enjoyable. It’s just the right texture and density to carve easily and smoothly, but hard enough that it doesn’t slip away from you too fast, as some of the softer texture plate materials can do.

I do however need some better carving tools, what I’m working with is decent enough to let me try it, but not fine enough to turn tight curves, so my designs are somewhat limited.

The blue green earrings in the gallery were made with a mix of clays to give rise to a semi-translucent clay with fibrous inclusions. I thought they had the look of carved jade and having looked at carved jade netsuke I saw that a lot were teamed with red beads, so I thought that this would be a nice way to finish these earrings, so have paired them with Brecciated jasper beads; a combination I’m certainly going to use again.

10 Jan 2017

Leaves and hedgehogs; given as gifts

Firstly, may I take this opportunity to wish my readers a Happy New Year and I hope that 2017 will be a good year for us all.

For obvious reasons, I couldn’t show all of the pieces I’d been working on in December, as many were intended to be given as gifts, but I can now share them with you.  Some have yet to be given, due to family illness over the festive period, but I think the secret will be safe enough here for now.

Having found some embed-able and fire-able brooch pin backs for metal clay, I got in the mood to make various brooch pins for family and friends, especially for those that are less likely to wear conventional jewellery.  Most people can find a spot on a bag or jacket for a pin, even if they don’t wear earrings etc.

Hedgehog pin in dry metal clay before firing.
Hedgehog pin in dry metal clay before firing.

My [adult] son has a pet African pygmy hedgehog called Mr Bruce Quillis, so the hedgehog pin was for him.  I spent an inordinate amount of time – and was greatly amused by it – trying to capture the individual look of his gorgeous spiky little chum and feel that I got pretty close to his proportions and cheeky personality.

I started by tracing a side-on pose of a African pygmy hedgehog, to get the basic shape, then tweaked the sketch to embrace his specific features.  Bruce has especially long and robust forehead quills, which he can lower rapidly, putting your fingers in mortal danger, at the approach of anything he considers dangerous or unknown – even if you’re handing him his favourite treat of a dried mealworm.  He lowers them as a precaution, then raises them again when he realises your intent.  So they certainly needed to be featured.  He also has larger than average ears, which sit lower than other hedgie’s and are rather square in shape.  His snout is a little longer (the African Pygmy Hedgehogs have longer snouts than domestic wild hedgies anyway) than others in his breed and he has incredibly bright and attentive eyes, which stand rather proud.

Using a fine v-shaped engraving tool to create a texture mat worked really well to emulate the fine, sharp quills.
Using a fine v-shaped engraving tool to create a texture mat worked really well to emulate the fine, sharp quills.

I then needed to contemplate how to actually reproduce him in metal clay.  I needed to make him look like a hedgehog, but without his metal quills being as dangerous as the real thing. The finished pin needed to be wearable on a garment without presenting snag hazards or sharp points.  So I transferred the sketch (mirroring it of course) and used a fine engraving tool and engraved his quills into a rubber carving mat, along with some other positional details.  I used this to impress a slab of metal clay, which once dried, I further engraved for fur and details and appliqued his facial features to give it some dimension.  Filing the edges to an irregular shape around the quills gave rise to a safe, wearable impression of his quills.  He has rather delicate legs and tiny toes, so these needed to be simplified so that they weren’t too fragile.  I don’t mind telling you that I held my breath as I took him out of the kiln, hoping that once shrunk during firing, it still looked like Bruce.  I also don’t mind admitting to the kiln-side happy dance I did when he peeked out of the carbon at me and I recognised that gorgeous cheeky face!

The round pin in the gallery below features various appliqued details on a plain round base, including tiny sculpted teardrop shaped wells that were filled with flame coloured UV resins for a splash of colour. The round pin and hedgehog were in Aussie Metal Clay Antarctic Moonlight and the various leaf pins are in Prometheus Sunny Bronze.

Recent Work Gallery: