Productive Few Days

It's been pretty hot and humid here but I did manage to drag myself out into the shed and do some soldering. I finished another one of the cast twigs that I made at my casting class a few weeks back. I made it into another necklace but this time I've laid it out vertically instead of horizontally like my first twig necklace.



Also, played with a heavy gauge wire to make these swirl earrings. No soldering involved - just forming, hammering & polishing.



I have to be a little considerate these days with my hammering. Our house is surrounded on 3 sides by houses that have babies. I shut my self in the spare room and close the doors, hoping it's not too loud for the neighbours! I haven't had any complaints so far! Pin It

Turning a negative into a positive!

First I pierced (hand sawed) a rabbit design from a sterling disc to make this pendant:



Then I soldered the little cut out rabbit onto another Sterling disc to make a second pendant here:



The negative space in the first pendant makes the rabbit look slightly fatter than the actual cut out on the second, that's because I domed the first pendant which enlarged the space. Pin It

Possibilities in Metal

Over the last 2 Sundays I've attended the "Possibilities in Metal Casting" Workshop at The Fremantle Arts Centre
It was lots of fun, I went with my talented friends Lotta & Jane and the teacher was renowned Local Artist Sarah Elson. We enjoyed it so much we have signed up for Sarah's class for Term one to explore some more of the possibilities!
We cast all sorts of things, I tried a wax model of a lego brick, some twigs, a resin mini plane (that Jane made a mould of from a little toy plane I had lying around).

My most succesful casts were the twigs which I cast in Sterling Silver, the other things require quite a bit of clean up so I'll save them for another time. This morning I spent some time polishing up one of the silver twigs and soldering the jumprings on - I had sawn out the little sterling silver bird earlier in the week so he got soldered on too.

It's not really an original idea as I've seen lots of similar sorts of things done with cast twigs, I imagine because the obvious thing to do is to pop a bird on a branch! The beauty is of course, that no two twigs are alike. Anyway, I'm very happy to have a cute necklace to wear as a result of the course.

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2009's looking good.

I'm pretty happy at the moment. I actually have all the family home at one time!

My husband works "fly in-fly out", my daughter has been off living her life away from home doing the back packing thing, and it's just been me & Adam (when he's home) and the two dogs!

Murray's contract finished and the new job doesn't start until the end of January so he's been home for a 6 week stint working out of head office locally. Then Lauren decided she couldn't save up for her next lot of adventures by living in Melbourne and surprised us by turning up at 5 to 12 on New Years eve.

The downside - well, the amount of washing actually. The positives...too numerous and they outweigh the negatives :)

Here's the younger half of the family:

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