Felting table - mission accomplished!

After a lot of fun, and a lot of  pain in my back after the last felting day I decided - enough is enough! I need something more comfortable. I searched internet for examples, searched home for supplies. So what we need? Height, frame, hole, vessel to gather water and of course all that addition should have a slope, so the water will go down to hole. I've found 2x4" wood planks that perfectly fit under framing for table, took out of garage leftovers from molding and my painting board, that a few years served me as jewelry table (well... it's time to serve me more). And today I used my husband's power tools to put everything in one nice and useful piece:o))  Voilà!!!

 Of course it's far from perfect, but I'm sure my back will appreciate my hard work:o)

The ammonium patina

I'd left my homemade bronze clay piece a few days in ammonium fumes. Definitely it was too long :o( the piece had gotten to black and just a little beautiful bluish showed up. 

With the rustic texture of the piece the play of black and blue looked good, but I wanted more blue and less black, so I sanded high points as much as I could and put piece back to fumes (just for half day). I like the end result. Black and blue and rustic texture, it really looks like out of excavation site :o)))

 What I need now... some cool ancient looking chain design :o))

Lithuanian influence

Just week at home from trip to Lithuania after 23 years and full of influence of an ancient, little and green country (my son's words:o). Amber and bronze authentic works at Amber museum in Palanga, and beautiful hand felted wool and linen creations through and out of Old Vilnius galleries - that was a big inspirational sight. 

 

                    

A handful of amber (gift from my aunt) gave me a lot of play time with my Bronze clay pieces.

And 3kg of brought wool a lot of hard work out in my backyard:o) but very happy friends that birthdays just came up on this time. As Russian expression says - "Pleasure with usefulness"

So till the hot weather allows me to play with water at my backyard, my jewelry tools will have some rest. Besides to run the kiln of 1500° F in 30° C temperature it's too much, right? :o) Probably, or I'll combine them both:o))))

 

But right now instead of dyeing my hair or doing manicure (going to the wedding this night) I'm engrossed in shoe lasts' making. So far in experimental mode, but a lot of fun even if it's not successful. Negative experience - is also experience :o). Rasa from Lithuania has a beautiful and successful experience of making shoe lasts' from professional extruded insulation foam (here is the link), mine was from canister and not so successful. Second tried from insulation sheet, but cement glue "ate" my layers of foam and the form got somehow crippled :o) but from home renovation I had left a container of plastic wood (wood filler) that I decided to improve the form with my knowledge for sculpting :o))) then filing and sanding (from jewelry), then painting (well... from painting:o) that got me to far far away from the perfect lasts, but enough for using with size 44/10.5.

Felting abc update

The second pair in two days! But the good one:o) officially approved by pros from felting forum:o)))) so proud of myself:o)))

 Prepare sleighs in summer, and the cart in winter:o)))

Felting abc

Felting slippers is a very very hard work, don't fool yourself that the end product is soft and cozy. It's a good workout equal to a good gym work and not one hour, but 5 or 10 if you are a new as me in this practice:o) but if you have friends that do not wear earrings and you don't want overload them with necklaces, you need to think other direction to make personal, handmade gift:o) I've got into some internet studying, asked suggestions and feedback from Lithuanian felters (I think they are the best:o) on the felting forum. So far I've made two pairs of, let's say, suitable to give as a gift:o) and made four, that keeping as secret inside the family for durability tests:o))) But to tell the truth it's very addictive and if you fail with pair one, you get kind of into "I can do it" mode and begin with another pair:o) I decided to use a  nice summery weather, to ask my friends their feet sizes, put my table in the backyard and learn how to felt properly:o) I'll keep positive attitude-free workout! can't beat that:o)))

Experiments with polymer clay

Necessity... the mother of invention. It's too hot (this week we permanently have around +30°C and more)  to bake a polymer clay, no way I would use my stove, but I needed to do some polymer clay forms/stamps to use with meal clay. So I just thought ... cup warmer, that we use for metal clay drying, runs around 120-140 F? What we need for polymer clay? 135F? Yeah! Of course it's not the solution for polymer artist, but just for small stamps?! It's perfect! after a 20 min on cup warmer my stamp was very well hardened. No stove, no big heat, not even leaving the bench :o)!

Stay cool :o)!!!

Sealing kiln patina

I'd read about Everbrite Coating at Wanaree's blog of course I couldn't keep myself from trying:o) for me most important part was sealing kiln's patina. Will it stay or not? A few days ago got my Everbrite Coating sealer. So... here are the results of my experiments. All pieces made of homemade bronze clay with natural kiln patina. Homemade bronze (opposite to copper) clay pieces are pretty coarse and porous (clay particles are 325 mesh). And sealer goes into the surface as into sponge:o) but ... so far by results it's really the best sealer I've tried. Yes, colors get dull, but not so that you totally lose the coloring. So for high traffic pieces I definitely will  use it.

I unfortunately do not have original image for the pebble, bet even now you can see the coloring that left, it's not bad at all.  As I understand - the "bad" color for sealer is a blue, as usually it dulls/became black, others more or less keep on just dull a bit.  

Here some visual.

 after sealing

 before sealing

the small details weren't sealed, just the big rings