Happy Everything!

Well, it's a little late to be saying Happy New Year seeing as we're well into February already.
And we won't mention about the 6 months plus since my last post except for me to say Thank you to my readers for still subscribing to my blog and not culling me from your blog lists when decluttering (Wasn't that everyone's New Year's Resolution?)

After finishing my Cert 2 at Tafe, I was keen to continue on creating at home but last year it just fell by the wayside. My inspiration abandoned me and I was busy at work and at home so it just didn't happen.

Two recent events have changed that! First my husband bought me a great Christmas present (yes, he's a keeper!) - it was a total surprise, and a much appreciated gift - Here it is:

It was hiding in the shed for 2 months. Even though I do go in the shed quite often I never even noticed it hidden down the back among the neglected camping gear! Just goes to show how cluttered the shed was! What a fabulous surprise -  I cried when he took me out to the back garden Christmas morning and it was sitting there with it's big Christmas ribbon around it.  (Ha Ha - tears of joy!!)   No longer do I have to attach my small vice and Bench peg to the Meals Area Table. I now have my own dedicated jewellery bench to hammer, saw and drill and solder. We had to do some rearranging of the spare room and I need to get another power point put in but other than that it's working really well.....and we can use the Meals Area Table for ......well, our meals!

The second event is that I enrolled in another course. Two former Tafe Lecturers have opened up a metal studio. They are running courses, renting out bench space, opening up gallery space, loaning out metalwork books library style  - everything!
I enrolled in the 6 week enamel class which was their very first class. There's so much about this that is good: they are awesome teachers and have created an informal, friendly, practical, well equipped, safe place for us to learn.  Perth people check out the link  - Contemporary Metal Students are very spoilt.

We are covering experimental enamelling techniques in this course, rather than the traditional techniques such as Cloisonne. This suits me as I don't really have the patience for that sort of work. We've covered techniques using Liquid enamels, Sifting, Stencilling, Stamping, decals, & Sgraffito. Pretty much anything we can think of - we're encouraged to try. Some of things the other students have tried were impressing glass beads and fusing them to the work, and impressing ferns & material into the enamel before firing We're churning out lots of sample pieces and having lots of fun. I've made some cool pieces (and a couple of ugly pieces which I'm not showing!) but I'm learning so much and I'm looking forward to firing up the kiln at home when classes are over and playing with it all some more.
 Some of my favourite experiments were with stencilling.

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The samples above were made by sifting the powdered enamel through thin acetate stencils. The exception is the bottom left sample where the enamel was sifted directly through a piece of lace ribbon. If you're interested there's more on the stencils and how I made them over on my other Craft blog.

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All Fired Up!

Happy to finally put up a blog post to show something I've made. Creatively this year has been a bit of a non event for me, so it's great to be back into it again.
This term I enrolled at an enamelling class down at my favourite place of learning The Fremantle Arts Centre.
I've done 3 classes so far and I'm just loving it. Great teacher (Jacquie Sprogoe), great classmates and a relaxed, informative and enjoyable class.
I've nothing to show off from the class just yet - I'm doing a cloisonne piece at the moment and it's a work in progress but today, inspired by my lessons,  I fired up my kiln at home, (yes that poor neglected piece of equipment I purchased last year!) and had a play.
Just did a couple of simple sifted pieces but it gave me a bit of a feel for the firing times, how thick to put the layers on etc,  so all in all a good afternoons work and I realized I don't have to be scared of my kiln - it's actually quite user friendly! Using the kiln in class has given me a bit of confidence I think.

Here's the results - first one opaque white over copper and the second one was an unintentional but pleasant surprise with opaque white over opaque black. I've oxidised the edges of the copper too as I love the look of the blackish border around the pieces.

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Where Oh where is the fedex man?

,I recently purchased a kiln to use in my jewellery making and it's due to arrive today. It's being shipped direct from the manufacturer and I've been tracking it's progress on it's journey.

It's taken a rather long way around to get here, it's on Aussie soil now, in fact it's in the delivery truck now as I type, but first it went from Texas, to Tennessee and then to Anchorage Alaska. That bit surprised me - I wouldn't have thought Alaska was the most direct route from Texas to Perth but (?) ..... It then had a short stopover in Singapore before hitting our shores.

I had to rearrange the delivery, as it was initially due to arrive yesterday and I was at work all day. Then at midnight when I checked it's status before bed (as you do!) it said it was ready to be picked up at the depot. I was on the phone at 7am today as I was pretty sure I didn't organise to pick the thing up myself on the other side of the city. The call centre chap said to check the status again after 9am to see if it was still at the depot or on the truck as he couldn't tell either!

It's now 2 pm and it's been on the truck since 9 am. I'm anxious, although I know I shouldn't be, but the anticipation is killing me, will I hear the door knock? (very likely as the dogs will go ballistic so pretty much pointless worrying there!)

This morning the people across the road missed a delivery - I watched from the window as a delivery man took out his trolley, went to the front door, returned his trolley to the truck and left a card in their letterbox. I spent the next hour worrying it was really my kiln in that truck and they'd attempted delivery at the wrong house. Actually I haven't stopped worrying about that yet!

It's very wet and cold today but I've got the front door wide open, so that I'll hear the sound of the truck - I've got a security screen by the way! I have to move fast when I hear the truck to lock the dogs in the bedroom - that way I can open the screen door and allow my kiln - all 18.6 kgs - to be wheeled in on the delivery trolley without the dogs making their usual bid for freedom or jumping up on the poor fedex man.

Ha Ha, the stress of it all ;) - wonder what people did before online tracking?

Update: 3.24pm The Fedex Lady delivered my Kiln - All my worrying was for nothing :) Pin It