Pebble Painting: Christmas and Easter

It seems (on a quick search through my posts and pics) that I have been remiss and have failed to share a project I designed, completed and taught last year. I’ve created another version this month – hence this post. May I introduce my Christmas and Easter pebble painting…

Pebble painting - Christmas
Pebble painting - Easter
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Christmas Card 2023 – a ‘stained glass’ tag

Scrolling through my photos on my phone, I came across some I’d taken of the cards I made for Christmas (now last year). As they’ve all been sent, received and recycled, I can share them here. Featuring a ‘stained glass’ design, the tag is removable and designed to be kept and used year-to-year. Making notes follow…

Removable handcrafted 'stained glass' tag Christmas card
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Quilt No. 031: From Scratch

I’ve been planning this quilt since August 2021 – at least, that is the creation date of my design file. I’ve created this one from scratch, designing the pattern, working out the fabric requirements, editing it for different dimensions and then choosing the fabric. The quilt was finally commissioned as a sofa cover back in March 2023 and I completed it last week having worked on it on and off since the summer.

blue, grey and white geometric patterned quilt created from scratch
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Laser-cut: Five tealight holders

I’ve been playing on my Glowforge laser cutter during the lockdown and experimenting with designing tealight holders. The first, tall one, took inspiration from one I came across on Pinterest. Once I had all the settings dialled in for the circular design, I came up with the next two designs. One features mirror acrylic and is a little bit out there, but I hope the internal reflections will make it zing. After that came the next two faceted rounds using various repeating seamless patterns to fill the facets. All are made from 3mm birch plywood, treated with flame retardant and are available to purchase for £5 each (p&p extra).

Sculpture: Here be dragons I

Over the last month or so, I have been working on a new sculpture of a dragon. Made from scratch, I first start with a tin foil armature (the essential shape and skeleton of the beast) and then cover it in stages with Pal Tiya, a specialist modelling material that handles like clay but hardens in water. Once the Pal Tiya has cured for a week submerged in the pond, I let it dry. Fine details were modelled with an epoxy clay which sets rock hard over 24 hours. The fibres in the Pal Tiya make fine detail modelling quite difficult, especially at this relatively small scale. I finished off with dry brushed acrylic paint. The sculpture is designed to go outside and should be weather resistant.

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Altered Art: Dark Hedges Shadowbox

On a recent trip to Co. Antrim (Northern Ireland), I visited the Dark Hedges. Now made famous by ‘Game of Thrones’ using it as the King’s Road, Dark Hedges is an avenue of ancient beech trees. As a memento of the visit, I’ve created this layered shadowbox using a photo I took. The card is 300gsm to maintain the stiffness of each layer, particularly of the branches which are too slim for glue/foam pads.

Dark Hedges shadowbox

I cheated a little by duplicating a couple of the trees, tweaking their branches rather than creating five trees from scratch. I think with the intermingling of the branches, there is sufficient distraction for me to get away with it 🙂

I found it tricky to get the depth of field and wonder if the left-hand side needs a third tree. Overall, the 3D effect seems to be effective – which is just as well as it took ages to achieve! There are seven layers front to back, with the road slanted front to back to emphasise the depth of field.

Bible Journaling: Sparkle

Next month’s Bible Journaling Session has the theme ‘a bit of bling’. There are some verses and illustrations that just scream out for some sparkle. A quick search using biblegateway.com came up with this gem: the only verse in the NIV translation that has the word ‘sparkle’ in it.

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Altered Art: ‘Stained’ Glass

stained glass effectI’ve been playing around with some 15cm square mounted glass plates I had lying around the studio. I found some 3mm self-adhesive lead strip and used a template to stick it down. Rather than soldering the joins, I overlapped them and made sure they were well burnished. Then it was a matter of using some alcohol inks on the reverse of the glass to give the colour/’stained’ glass effect. I used isopropanol/rubbing alcohol to remove the alcohol ink from areas I didn’t want it.

Top tip: when cleaning fingerprints off with alcohol, remember not to wipe the reverse of the glass or some of your stain will rub off too…

The contemporary cross panel is available to purchase here.

Laser Cut: 3D Mandalas Part II

I’ve had a couple more goes at layering 3D mandalas. Making the layers sometimes causes some head scratching, but as I have been used to editing layers in other design work, it’s not all bad. The first two are based on my hand drawn mandalas, and the second is based on a photo of a real snowflake.

3D mandalas - 1

 

 

3D mandalas - snowflake