Friday, June 30, 2017

Cord and Pearls

Class Work

This is from another online class. It is about making jewelry simply with knotting leather cord  around large pearls. This piece is supposed to get a focal piece at the end - when I get time.

From this .....


.......To this. It has a an endless look, with no clasp or visible stop.




This knot was the key practice point.





Thursday, June 29, 2017

Wrought Iron Art in Savannah, Georgia

I had a long stay in Georgia in May and promised to share some of my photos. I took many with intentions of making blog posts. I had lots of time available while waiting for the baby to arrive but, alas, no way to post to blogger. Since then, with all the catch up work from being gone three times longer than planned and my wedding schedule, it has been impossible for me to get a post made. So sorry. 

I was anxious to visit Georgia as I have read many books that were set in that area, notably Gone With the Wind and the books of Eugenia Price. When I think of Georgia I think of the American Civil War. What I had forgotten was that Georgia was the thirteenth colony of the New World so has a rich and deep history. We visited some eighteenth century sites which I hope to post about at another time.

I want to start just by showing you some of the beautiful architecture of the city of Savannah, which is in the "low country" on the edge of the marshes and near the Atlantic ocean. It was a very important American port during colonial times and during the War between the States. 

Savannah was the first city where my daughter and I did a walking tour. One of the things that stood out to me was the ornate decorative wrought iron that seemed to embellish every historic building. Savannah is well known for its cast iron and wrought iron. These are just photos I took as we walked along but my understanding is that there are some very unique designs all throughout the city.




 This was the exterior of an antique store that had very old and very expensive pieces in it. I'll give a peek inside in another blog post.




This building was one of the first colleges in the city but is now a law office.


 Residences



Fragrant jasmine growing up the iron railing. 


 I swooned like a southern belle....





A secret garden, my favorite kind....




 a garden gate











 This is a fence around an historical monument.



One of the fun things we did was eat lunch at this restaurant owned by a famous southern cook named Paula Deen. I read her autobiography many years ago. She had a very interesting start as a single mother of two boys who had been left by her husband and became an agoraphobic, never leaving her home for ten years. She was an excellent cook, taught by her mother and grandmother in the classic southern style. She began this restaurant to support her sons and became very successful, eventually having an extremely successful television cooking show and writing many cookbooks. Just a couple years ago she was unjustly vilified by the mainstream media as a racist and lost her show. Her restaurants are still popular. This one is run by her son and also has a gift shop. It was fun to visit there; the food and drink was delicious.



The restaurant and gift shop also had some unique wrought iron using a cast iron frying pan motif-


 The name of the restaurant- "The Lady and Sons"


I thought it was an extremely creative way to use something the city was famous for in a personalized style.





Well, that's a start on my 2000+ photos I took in the states of Georgia and South Carolina. I will try to share more again soon.

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Hmmmm, What's Coming?

Starting

These are the beginnings of the projects for one of my on- line craft classes.


Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Crocheted Bag Made of Plastic Bags (Part 1)

Once again, I apologize for the disgusting quality of the photos I am about to inflict on your eyes.

This project is something I've wanted to try out for about a year now; and this week I decided I was just going to jump in and do it even though I couldn't remember where I saved the instructions I'd found online, or if there even were any -- perhaps I'd just been meaning to search the web for some concrete steps, and hadn't actually found some... Anyway, the point was, I was not about to over-research the thing again, but instead wing it.

I lost count of how many plastic bags I used (I'm going to guess at least fifty), and I ran out before the project was finished.

So, there are two reasons this is a two-part post (I'll have the second part up sometime before the end of July, most likely -- unless I hear loud protests to this plan, haha); the first is that, of course, the project is not completed; the second, that I have neither the time nor the plastic bags to finish it at this time.

OKAY! Obviously, tonight is a blabber-fest. Please bear with me. :)

To start --


I grabbed my stash of plastic bags, my trusty scissors, and a size Q (US) crochet hook (not pictured below).




Firstly --


the thing was to get the bags into some sort of resemblance to string, so I could crochet with it. I flattened one out, cut off the bottom, and sliced the rest into horizontal strips about 2 inches thick. (I did not measure exactness -- this is a sloppy-slappy project I am doing.) The last part left was the handles. I tossed that piece, and the bottom of the bag.



Each strip was now a loop of crooked plastic. I joined them using a lark's head knot.


Then I had a length of uneven, knotty, plastic string to work with. :)

Secondly --


to crochet the bottom of the bag, I worked a chain, then used a pattern of single-crochet stitches and chain-one's to expand around the beginning chain, making extra stitches in the corners to keep the flatness.






(If anyone is interested in more exact instructions, I can try to work some out for later.)

Thirdly --


when I had the bottom roughly how big I thought I wanted it (it was actually a little smaller than I wished it to be, but whatevs), I left off putting the extra stitches in the corners of the rounds, beginning to form the sides.



I had a couple of different colors in bags from different stores, so I went for a little striping.

AND THIS PROJECT WILL BE COMPLETED AT A LATER DATE.


Some notes:

I didn't put all the string together at once. I added pieces as needed, and it is a fairly painless procedure.

Working with the slippery-yet-grippy plastic strips and the huge plastic crochet hook is slightly more challenging than I had originally thought it would be. I had to revert to the technique I started fumbling with when I first began to learn crochet, and it brought back some multi-colored memories.

You REALLY don't need to be precise with this. Especially if you don't care if the final result is lumpy and funky.

SO THAT'S IT FOR NOW -- Let me know if you super don't want to hear the rest of this madness -- maybe you would just settle for a picture of the completed bag, or maybe it hurts your optical orbs too much and you would really rather be spared another sight of the project I'm cobbling together. Haha!

Seriously, let me know. :)


--------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE:

Part 2 can be found here!
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Monday, June 26, 2017

Doors Up

Maria's Cabinets

Here is how some of them look hung. They need a finish coat and handles, but that will come after sundry persons go traveling shortly.

 
We will try for a finished-kitchen picture when it is actually finished.

Sunday, June 25, 2017

Acrylic Painting

Arabian Stallion

This is from an old photo of *Mirage, a stallion imported from the dessert to America around the turn of the last century. He became a foundation sire of the breed. He was in my Arabian gelding's pedigree, too.

I have some plans underway, and this is part of it, so this painting is a departure from the watercolors I have been doing. (Last night had computer maintenance going on and other things so no post yesterday and this is posted via i-pad.) 
 

This is the second iteration, revised from from some inaccurate proportions.
The following is the third version, and final, with head accoutrements.
The whole work was done in ultramarine blue, burnt sienna, and white, with a touch of metallic silver on the chain.
The lighting difference is from outside to inside.

 

Blessings on your Sunday. 

Friday, June 23, 2017

One More To Go

A Little Owl

One more door needs a design. This was today's drawing, to get put on the door.....soon, maybe.

Assignment: find the differences between this version and the next. It got some additions for finishing.

Ready for laser - Sperlingskauz.
in German, owls have various names, depending on their size and shape. Not just "barn owl and great horned owl and  snowy owl," but names that mean owl but are more specific: Uhu for big "horned"owls, Kauz for small round-headed owls, and Eule (from which we get our English word) for the others.

And all these scribbles make an owl.


After the weekend, Maria's kitchen should look different, and we will try to share pictures, if someone remembers a camera.

Thursday, June 22, 2017

Maria's kitchen cupboard doors

Maria had a friend redo the kitchen in her chalet, except for the cupboard doors. She chose five local animals to be lasered onto the doors by Florian.

Red deer

Red fox

Badger

Kinglet and chickadee
Trial pieces

The cone was the first practice with the laser machine.
The little birds were done with a woodburning tool to try out the concept of added paint washes.





We decided we liked the paint washes, so the doors were enhanced accordingly.