rubber molds in the summer heat

So I really didn't document the first part of my mold making process, mostly due to the fact that I had one hand sunk in dental grade alginate. It's hard to maneuver a camera when you have a box attached to you. Ha! That sentence sounded horrible.

But I'm so glad I wrote that entry, because luckily, my college studio-mate pointed out that rubber was a suitable mold to cast resin in, not plaster. So it was back to the drawing board! I had to revise my two-part plaster mold into a two-part rubber mold. Slightly more complicated, but hey... I love mold making, so the challenge was accepted.

So back to Blick I went on Friday, and picked up Smooth-On Rebound 25 rubber and plastalina . But before I could strap on my gloves and mix the rubber, I had to do a little thinking... was I going to just paint the rubber on when the plaster hand was free standing? Or should I work a little more on my prep and make a pour-able mold? The pour-able mold won out by a landslide. Yes, it's a ton more prep-work and there is a slight risk that your mold will bust a leak and rubber will go spewing out all over the place... but the results and the stability of the mold would be worth it. What can I say. I'm a rebel risk taker. Not.

the mold, plastalina and aluminum with keys

On Saturday, I built up a bed of plastalina (it's an oil based clay that doesn't dry or shrink) to rest the hand on in a horizontal position. The one benefit of working with plastalina on a 90+ degree day is that it gets super pliable and soft with the heat. Then I used some aluminum flashing to make a quick and easy flex mold. It's so much easier than cutting and clamping wood together, fo realz. I used the plastalina to fill in the gaps, and to mask the bottom 50% of the plaster hand. Then, I pressed a couple marbles into the clay, and made some indentations to make keys. Keys are super important, because they will ensure that the mold aligns properly when you're ready to cast. Sounds easy, but that prep work literally took me five hours.

I sprayed the mold quickly with Ease Release so that the rubber wouldn't adhere to the plaster hand. Then it was all measuing, mixing and pouring from there! The Rebound 25 is a great 1A:1B ratio, so it takes the guesswork out of measuring. The first part of the mold came out better than I expected, so Saturday was a win in my book!

pour #1 after it had set for 12 hrs. ready to de-mold!

top left: before removing plastalina. top right: after. bottom: rubber with keys clearly a success!

On Sunday, I completed the second pour of rubber. I basically did the same steps all over again... built up a bed of plastalina, secured the aluminum flex mold, mix, pour, wait. When the rubber had set, I stood the hand/rubber mold up. I noticed that all of the plaster on the base of the hand wasn't covered, so I decided to mix a small batch of rubber and cover it up. Totally worth it in my books. I'll add some pics of that with my next post.

Today I'm hoping to make the first 1/2 of the plaster mother mold. Wish me luck!

my first real craft show!

I had a great time at my first real craft show! I brought along 40 wine bags, 4 tie-purses, some poof ball flowers and vases that I made for the wedding, and two small paintings which you might remember: abcdef fail and anxiety.

A lot of people made me feel so great: Compliments on how clever my ideas really made me smile. It was wonderful to hear people admiring my sewing and my bags. AAAAAAAAND (drum-roll PLZ....) I SOLD 4 BAGS! I'm so glad I made more bags and spent time preparing as much as I could. I did learn a couple of things from my craft show experience.

• I need sign. I picked up foam-core to make one the other night, and I decided that it wouldn't look professional enough, so I didn't bother making one. I need to make one like I made for Bamboula. One that says something like CRAFTS MADE FROM TIES! or CREATIONS FROM TIES! or something like that.
• I wonder if I'm not being confident enough. I was so happy to talk to visitors at the table, that I didn't really "sell myself" like other people were. Is that a key to success?
• It would have been nice to have someone there for a couple minutes so I could have left to use the bathroom, or to walk around to see other peoples things. At one point, I had to pee so bad that I left a note that said BE BACK IN A MINUTE! and asked the couple next to me if they wouldn't mind keeping an eye out for me. 

All in all it was a great day for a great cause. I hope I can do more fairs in the future, and maybe with some luck, I can have some more success!

more F'in work

I do have some concerns about my giant F. I really needed the F to be lightweight, because the wall it's destined to hang on backs up to a shower. So I couldn't make it too heavy and risk it A: ripping off the wall with smaller screws, or B: having longer screws penetrate into the shower. Luckily, it's still light as a feather, so a couple of strategically placed small picture hanging hooks should work just fine.My other concern is having the F stay together. I tried as best as I could to execute it F'in properly. I just hope it doesn't crumble apart once it's finally up on the wall.

Last night I lightly sanded and primed the F. I'm hoping that I can get a coat of yellow paint on it some night this week. With my now part-time work schedule (eek) and part-time school schedule (EEK), I have to find a new balance when it comes to my craft-work-school time. Eek.

bag n' bread

When I was putting prices on all of my wine bags, I noticed one lonely half-finished tie purse in my bin that I started last year and just never finished. I had some free procraftination time today, so now the lonely half-finished tie purse is now a non-lonely ALL FINISHED tie purse! All I had to do was finish the inside of the front panel, create the back panel, and sew them to the already finished straps. It made for a great morning of work while I was cleaning up the house. The cat is shedding, and it constantly looks like a yeti exploded in here. Gross.

 
In other Saturday news, I made Lou's Dad famous bread, and I thought I would share it since I finally got to make it this afternoon. It's a super simple recipe that requires only four ingredients. I used a spicy salt and whole wheat flour. Yum!

 3 cups flour

1-1/2 tsp salt

2-1/4 tsp yeast

1-1/2 warm water

Spray the inside of a large bowl with cooking spray. Sift all the dry ingredients into the bowl, then add the warm water. Mix until combined. Cover with plastic wrap and let it rise in a warm spot for four hours. Turn the dough onto an oiled surface and cover again for thirty minutes. While rising again, preheat your oven and dutch oven to 450°. Add dough, cover and bake for thirty minutes. Take the lid off the Dutch oven and bake for another ten minutes. Let cool on a cooling rack. Or devour immediately like I do. 

a little help from my friends (and major corporations)

So with the prospect of going back to school for Dental Hygiene, I ran into a little bit of what I'd call a 'mental roadblock'. While I know that I am perfectly capable and able to mentally and physically complete the program, I didn't want others (that being professors or classmates) to think that I physically wouldn't be able to because of my left hand. Nothing has ever really held me back (except ring around the rosie) and this won't either: I can sculpt, paint, type, sew, sign ASL and do most anything anyone else can do. Maybe a little better sometimes. I'm not bragging. This is just a fact. The only thing that I could foresee being a quote-unquote 'problem' was having the disposable Nitrile gloves not fit me properly. So naturally I did what any other person would do.

I started reaching out to every single Nitrile glove manufacturers and distributors I could find in the USA to see if they in any way could help me in my quest to find or make a custom fitted disposable Nitrile glove. So far, I've contacted 13 companies. Two companies emailed me back and said that they wouldn't be able to help. Which is totally fine, I'd rather have someone respond with an answer than not respond at all. One company representative called me to explain that they did not actually produce the gloves, but that she would forward my inquiry to companies that she knew of. (She also told me, good for you for following your dreams and not letting anything hold you back. TEAR!)

One company emailed me back to say "I hope that we can help you with your needs. I will consult with our team to see if there is a glove we can dip for you."

WAIT.
WHAT?
SOMEONE CAN HELP?

ER.
MAH.
GERD.

Thus begins my quest: To dig deep back into my mold making routes to make a perfect resin cast of my left hand to send to this generous company.

On Sunday, I made an alginate mold of my hand and a perfect plaster cast. From here, I will make a simple two-piece plater mold of the cast so I will be able to cast multiple hands in resin. I had forgotten how much fun it is to make a mold.. the materials, the preparation, the anticipation of cutting the alginate away to see how the cast came out. It's bliss.

Also, I need to get on my game and take some pictures. These pictureless posts are lame.

culmination

It seriously took me a couple days to put my thoughts together to write this post. You could say this post entitled culmination is the culmination of thoughts, but it's mostly about the culmination of one of my most difficult projects. Actually, it's all about the culmination of my most difficult project. I never thought I could use that word 4 TIMES in the same post!

I FINISHED THE QUILT.
That's right... The quilt is finished! Der Quilt ist fertig! El quilt está terminado!

As you might recall, in my last quilt post I noted that I needed to hand stitch the open seam closed to the backing fabric and officially 'sign' the quilt. I began by pinning the binding in place with my super long 1-1/2" flat quilting pins. Then, since I'm not a very good hand-stitcher, I thought it would be wise to do some research on which stitch would be best to finish the open seam. (PS: Typing which stitch would be best is just as hard as saying it three times fast.) I ended up choosing the blind stitch thanks to the awesome instructions and description on this blog called Quilting in the Rain. <--- If you have a couple of minutes, please check out her blog: It's unbelievable, plus it's so bright and cheery!

It look me a little while to find my stride when it came to blind stitching, but over the course of a week, I diligently sewed the night away. I pricked my fingers.. and legs... and arms a couple of times, thanks to those super long 1-1/2" quilting pins. But with every stitch, I knew that I was getting closer and closer to finishing my first quilt.

On Saturday night, I sat down on the couch and began stitching away, knowing that within a couple of hours my project would be finished. I thought about all the work that went into making it. I thought each strip of fabric that I pieced together, sewing them onto the muslin blocks, pressing them flat and fashioning them all into rows and columns. I thought about how I almost convinced myself to send it out to get finished, and the moment it dawned on me to just give it my best shot. I thought about all of my family, and the signatures that they added to different blocks of fabric. And then I thought about the one signature that was missing. Adelaide Ruess. 

So, I added it myself. 

I was emotionally and physically exhausted after finishing it, and ended up falling asleep on the couch wrapped up in my new quilt. I was so happy that I accomplished my goal of making a quilt, but I was also quite sad. It's cruel to me that I can't show it to Audi. But in my heart, somehow I think that she has seen it. I hope she's as proud of me as I am of myself.

If you'd like to look back at all of the quilt related posts, you can find them right here.

obligatory wedding craft DIY post part 2

So on to the place cards. I accidentally purchased ones that are more like business cards, and less like the tenty-ones that I thought I was buying. My bad. I wasn't going to return them back to Vistaprint, so I had to find a solution to my little problem.

 

So I did what anyone else would have done: I Google'd it! I typed in place card holder and the one solution that caught my eye was a holder made from a wine bottle cork. Can you believe though, that some people on Etsy are selling them for upwards of $1.00 each? You and I both know that's a whole bunch of bologna. I can do that for way, way less. Actually... maybe I can ask Lou to do it for me since he's handy with tools and loves spending time in the garage...

BINGO.

I found some pretty cool online tutorials, but I thought I'd share my own below.

Wine Cork Place Card Holders
1. Buy 100 bottles of wine (remember, you'll need one bottle per guest!)
2. Open and drink 100 bottles of wine. Save the corks if you're not too drunk to remember this step. Keep drinking until you have enough corks!
3. Take 4 weeks to sober up, and/or be released from the hospital.

Or you can...
1. Go on EBay and purchase a bulk bag of 100 corks for $10.00.

I wouldn't recommend the first set of instructions unless you want to spend a lot of money or become a raging alcoholic.

Now, take your corks one at a time, and set them up in a vice-grip if you have one. It is much easier than trying to hold all the corks while trying to cut them. Cut off the bottom 1/3 of the cork and discard. Run a piece of medium grit sand paper over the cut surface. Finally, make a slit in the top of the cork deep enough for you to insert your place card.

VOILA! YUR DUN. And all for $10! With that extra $90, you can go buy many cases of vino from Total Wine!

obligatory wedding craft DIY post, part 1

Yes, I know I said that this wasn't going to become a wedding blog, and I promise that it still won't. I'm not going to get all omg look at these wedding favors (ERMAHGERD LERK ERT THERS WERDIN FERVERS!!) up in here. But there have been so many crafts that we're doing for WDay, that it would be impossible to ignore all the fun we've been having. We're literally crafting our poof balls off.

You may remember a while back I was making a ton of yarn poof-ball flowers in anticipation of using them for as my wedding flower boquet. Well... the idea was ultimately vetoed, so I decided to just use them as decoration instead. Luckily, back in November whilst on a Pocono hike, I found A TON of discarded bottles in the woods. There must have been hundreds of them. So, like any good  hoarder environmental enthusiast, I loaded up those gross, mud caked bottles into the car and carted them home. After giving them a good soaking and shining them up with Windex, they looked like brand new. AAAAAAAAAAND I had the perfect vessels for my poof flowers! Some bottles still had gook and goobers inside, so I cleverly wrapped twine around those sections, disguising the grossness.

That was my Saturday project. I had to make a couple more poof flowers, so it took me a little while to get all 15 of the bottles done.

On Sunday, I made the 'guest book'. And by 'guest book' I mean, matted picture frame. When it comes to guest books, there's about a zero percent chance that I'll ever sit down to peruse a guest book. We framed up an 8x10 picture that we took in front of the Golden Gate Bridge with a 16x20 mat. I used some old Scrabble letters, some wire and decorative beads to label it as the 'guest book'. Not too bad for a couple hours of crafty work! Tomorrow I'll post about the place card dilemma and solution.

week overdue

Yes, I was supposed to write a post last weekend to update all of the crazy fun stuff that I've been doing, but my time ran short on every single day. How does that always seem to happen? I'm not that popular, so that's not it. I am planning a wedding though. I'll blame it on that. Things are going well, quite well if you ask me. You didn't ask me though, but I'm telling you that anyways.

After about a month or two of consideration, I've decided not to send out my quilt for finishing. To meet the criteria of having it finished off by a long-arm quilter, it would have had to be damn near perfect. And it wasn't damn near perfect. It never will be damn near perfect, because it's my first quilt and quite frankly, I don't want it to be damn near perfect. There were ripples. It didn't lie completely flat. And if there were any rogue strings or threads exposed during the quilting process, it could have torn the quilt and destroyed everything I worked so hard on.

So. I sucked it up. I picked up that quilt on Sunday and started quilting the columns again. And GAADAMN it wasn't easy. Imaging running a full-sized quilt through a sewing machine. It looked a lot like this:


AHHHHHHHH QUILT EXPLOSION!

But, like I said: I sucked it up! I kept the quilt as taught as I could, constantly changed the needles and kept the bobbin completely stocked with thread. After what seemed like hours, I had all of the columns completely finished. MAJOR SCORE. After almost a year of not working on it, I was happy to see it and feel it again. Yesterday, I started working on the rows, which will be a lot tougher than the columns. You see the columns are all perfectly straight. But the rows.... ehh... not so much. Again, I'll rely on MSPaint to express myself.

 

When I go to stitch a row, they don't line up completely. So as soon as I get to an area where the row doesn't line up, I have to turn the quilt, stitch along the column for literally less that centimeter, then turn the quilt again to continue sewing the row. I set myself a goal of completing two rows per day, and it should take me about 7 days total, unless I double up a little over the weekend.

HERE'S TO GETTING SHIT DONE.

finally, some new etsy s***!

I added seven, yes SEVEN! new wine bags to Etsy today! I finished three a little earlier in the week as you may have read, but I finally was able to take pictures and post them. Somehow, I then got another rush of craft-fever, and finished sewing another four bags! I figured, HEY! Why not take a couple more pictures and post those, too?

The last four I finished were the new design I created, which is basically four ties on the outside, and a thick liner fabric for the inside. I used the zig-zag stitch to secure the four ties to one another, which adds some cool contrast to the exterior, if you don't mind me sayin'!

poofballs and flurricanes.

I really wanted to get outside and do some yard work yesterday, partially because of the upcoming Frankenf***er mega-douche storm, but mostly because I wanted soak up nature and spend some time in the yard.

In addition to raking up oodles of leaves, another important thing I wanted to do was to cut back the MASSIVE butterfly bush we have on the right side of the yard. We literally cut it down to a stump TWICE in the past year. But it's a beast, and it's all like YOU CAN'T HOLD ME BACK MUTHAF***ER! I GROW WHENS I WANTS! I was knee deep in lopping off branches when I had a yard work epiphany: The branches were the exact thickness I would need to finish my poof flowers! YARD WORK WIN!

Instead of hacking all the branches to bits, I removed all the greenery and cut them down to to sizes between 6-10". Last night with pumpkin beer and corn puffs in hand, I plugged in the ol' glue gun and went to town on the poofs. And yes, I stayed in on Saturday night like a looser. But after running around for weeks, it was a welcome break to spend a night in.


This morning when I woke up, I came downstairs and saw my awesome poof flowers on the kitchen table... and then looked outside and realized that my sparkling clean patio was now covered once again in wet heavy leaves. Yard work fail? Nah, not at all. I still spent a gloriously cloudy afternoon listening to music and spending time outside. That's always a win! The tree is laughing at me though.

B2B: bike to baby, not to beer.

I'm disappointed that my posts have been few and far between this summer. I think I've been productive, but I guess I haven't been putting it in words. I wanted to share the results of the box I was making.  You know, the kinda-secret but not-so-secret project. Results!

So the kinda-secret project was a box to hold cards for a surprise baby shower we went to this past Sunday for two fellow bike to beer ... bikers. Bike to beer bikers? Sounds redundant, but whatevs. And I crossed out surprise because future-husband spilled the beans the night before the shower, exclaiming to her, "yeah, I'll see you at your shower tomorrow!" D'OH. Needless to say, the surprise wasn't such a surprise, but the party was totally awesome. I must take notes from fellow crafter and party throwers Amie and Kara, because they rocks my party throwing socks. Onward!

So the concept came from the PMBA B2B sticker. You earn your sticker by riding your bike to get some beers. Good times! Hmmm... but then I was thinking: Is it inappropriate to put the B2B sticker logo on a card box, knowing that the recipient has been unable to drink beer for the past 8 months? Yes, for a beer lover that would be a certain slap. So I decided to do a different B2B logo: Bike to Baby instead. I think it came out nicely. After the stain dried, I did a light sanding to remove rough patches. I painted the inside green, then painted on some bold black silhouettes. I finished it off with a quick clear coat, and brought it to the shower on Sunday. All in all, a nice little project to do!!

signs for jumptown

Yesterday, boyfriend future husband asked me for a favor: If I could whip up a couple signs for the Jumptown Trail at Launch Bike Park. Stop looking for the trail on the map link, cause it ain't there quite yet folks. If you want to see the signs and some crazy DHer's in action, plan on joining them for the Gravity East Series this weekend at Launch, ya heard?!

Here's what we accomplished:

We did a little collaboration: Lou scoped out the garage and cut up a couple small pieces of plywood. One was 8x11 and two others were 6x14. He took care of sanding and priming, and sent me the text he wanted on the signs. So I went to work on Word 2010, just sizing and mixing up fonts. Nothing fancy, but the text we chose was effective and bold.

Now, here's a tip to save some time and frustration if you're looking paint text on signs: Make an investment in Sallys Graphite Transfer Paper. It will save you A LOT of time. I'm terrible at free-handing text. Drawing guide lines, centering text correctly... it's bullshit I say. BULLSHIT! Just print out your text, lay down a sheet of graphite paper, trace, admire and paint. BOOM. You done.

In about two hours last night, I had everything completely finished. It's nothing fancy, but if it saves a DHer from a gnarly OTB, then it's all worth it.

when the cat's away, the mouse will organize

It's no secret that I like organization. Lou jokes around that I am ze German because I love ze oerdaa (order) and following ze ruules. So on Saturday I decided to tackle a project that I long put off.

Organizing the spice cabinet.

Now, I know it sounds lame. But I had so much friggin' fun. You know why? CAUSE I LABELED EVERYTHING. I can't take total credit for the idea, though. The jars and labels were a hand-me-down from my Mom. Who also loves oerdaa. Ve arrr ze o-pit-o-mee of oerrganizaachun. She lent me her P-Touch label maker to add spices that she didn't have, and I went to motha-f'in TOWN on those jars.

I pulled up a nice section of carpet in front of the television, which was blaring episodes of renovation awesomeness and cooking awesomeness, and started the spice transfer. Do you know I had three things of dill? And three things of cinnamon?! WHY?! I also found bouillon cubes that expired before Lou and I started dating. Grossness.

Boyfriend Future Husband isn't totally thrilled because none of the spices have shaker tops. Possible fail, but maybe I can make a special spice shaker spoon?

anxiety painting

I've been quite the fan of splatter paintings lately. You might recall my last two, abcdef FAIL. and Time to Eat??. The first part requires me to squeeze copious amounts of acrylic paint onto a 5x5 canvas. Controlled messiness is fun! After that, it's all about what I find in my mind to apply to the surface.

I started a new one this past week.. reds, creams and yellows. I accidentally blew a load of glitter over it. But I ended up liking it, thank God. There's no undoing glitter. Once it's there, IT'S THERE. It looked to harmonious, so I added silver. I remembered that I had my mom's old medical dictionary from when she did nursing... so I pulled it out and started perusing through different afflictions, disorders, viruses and diseases. Good times, indeed. Who knew that SO MUCH could go wrong within your own body?

I'm not sure what order I found things in, but I discovered various medical drawings of the body and explanations for anxiety disorders. I started combining them together on the surface, adding my own paintings and ink drawings to blend them all together. I'm still not finished, but here's the progress so far.

fond memories

Yesterday I had the pleasure of running into my former sculpture professor while I was hanging up fliers for the Bike Art & Student show at the MRAC (<-- another story, for another time). I had just paid for my large iced coffee at the local DD, when I turned around and instantly recognized her. And I was so flattered that she recognized me as well. With our coffees in hand, and my bike in tow, we walked back to her home where we discussed our activities over the past seven years. I was surprised that she remembered my bark and latex figures. They were something that I've always loved to work on, and should do so more often, now that I think about it.

From the way I was explaining my so called 'art-goings-on' it honestly sounded like I was trying to convince not only her, but myself of my involvement in the art world, if you could call it that. I've done a good amount of work in the past couple years... but... I don't know. Nothing extraordinary, I guess. And no, I'm not being hard on myself. It's the simple truth. I'm an artist with professional training with a full time accounting job. I try to allot the time to work on pieces on my 'off-time', and sometimes I simply cannot. Sometimes I feel like I've failed already.

Seeing her again... It makes me yearn to begin new sculptures. It makes me want to finish the work that I have already begun. It makes me sad that I don't have a functional sculpture studio space to work in. Sure, I have my 'office' that doubles as my sewing room, where I can cut stained glass and paint... but a sculpture studio, it will never be. I'll either ruin the floor, muck up the walls, damage the stairway to and fro, this or that or so on. Sigh.

Will I ever work on sculpture ever again? HELL YES I WILL. I don't know when, but I have so many concepts that I want to explore. I wonder if other artists have gone through similar periods in their lifetime. First and foremost, I have to finish three projects that I've already started. None of which I'm keeping myself. Only one of which I'm being paid for. I have to stop doing that, too.

same ol' shizzle, different dizzle.

Last week had an obvious lack of posting. To be honest, I was a little burned out from the constant crafting over the past couple of weeks. Finish this painting, frame that one, and that one, stained glass, spray paint this, cushions galore... I needed a g'damn break from being crafty. So I took a week off. I can't say that I'm back with a vengeance yet, or even with gusto. I'm tip-toeing back. I may retreat at some point and resort to the comfort of watching Wild Russia and How It's Made.

I still haven't been able to find a good balance when it comes to everything that I have on my plate. If there's anything I've learned from this blog (now 99 posts and counting), it's that urges come and go. My activities and schedule vary from week to week, and I won't really know if I'm excited about something until the moment is upon me. For example: I knew yesterday would be the perfect day to be outside. It doesn't get much better than sunny and 68 degrees. Unless it's 70 and sunny. I also knew that I had a shit-ton of soldering to do. Another thing I learned is that it's horrible to solder indoors. The fumes, while deliciously intoxicating, are extremely intoxicating and quite bad for your health. Was I excited to solder? Not really. Was I excited to be outside? Absolutely.

Exciting + Not So Exciting = Pleasurably Tolerable, if you ask me.

So, I spent a good two or three hours outside, finished soldering and earned a 5 star sunburn on my neck and shoulders. Don't let April fool you. It burns.

theme show.



In June, the Manayunk Roxborough Art Center is going to have a bike part art show to coincide with the ever-so-popular, Manayunk Bike Race. I myself, am SUPER PUMPED about a bike part show, and I couldn't wait to start thinking about what I could come up with the submit to the exhibit!

Snazzy, ay? I'm particularly excited about the merriment.

Last weekend, I started by cutting and sanding three panels of super thick, fine-a** quality plywood for my project and used a dark walnut stain to give it a rich, rustic look. (I'm noticing a whole triptych theme here, I'm wondering why it is I've been working in threes...) I really didn't think about the panels during the week: But on Friday, after learning about the impending weekend rain storm, I decided to go home and give it some much needed attention. No one likes to spray paint in the rain. Or at least, I don't.

I set up my bike-art-spray-paint-base-camp in the driveway so I didn't stank-out the birds in our backyard: We already have one cardinal that isn't so s-m-r-t, and I didn't want to affect future generations of birds from the fumes. One bird constantly flying into the window is quite enough, we don't need his baby-cardinals flying up to our cat thinking its a tree. ITS A TREE ITS A TREE ITS A TREE! Next, I took some of Lou's old mountain bike chain rings and started layering them on the panels. I had seven different spay paint shades, and began the process of spray... rearrange!... spray... rearrange! 

I just realized that this photo is of the same two panels repeated, instead of the three I actually completed. I'll have to take better photos and upload them later. See what fumes can do to you?!

Anywho, after about a billion layers of spray/rearrange, plus the period of pause and let dry, I covered each panel in a quick drying poly-acrylic to seal it all in and make it shiny and bright. I also started experimenting with the chain rings and spokes (not spokey-dokes, unfortunately... although, now that I think about it...) so I'll have to take a picture of that and post it, too. I'm not sure how to incorporate it all together, but I'm sure an afternoon of drinking ...I mean constant thinking. I mean drinking, should clear that up.

In other news, I'm cooking dinner tonight. I accidentally spilled a bunch of red pepper flakes into the olive oil I was simmering, and didn't think too much about it. I should have. I just tasted it, and it tastes like burning. Tasty. JUST BURNING.

glass be owned.

On Sunday, I finished cutting out ALL of the glass for my friend's sisters wedding present, and I couldn't be happier! Since I have ten different glass colors (numbered one through ten, of course) I decided that it would be fun to cut the pieces out per color, and cross off the ones that I completed as I went along. I was so excited to finally get to number 10 and cross it off the list! I'm thrilled to think I'm finally getting better at cutting and breaking glass. This window saw far fewer mistakes than ones in the past.

Again, there's no full pictures of both glass panels because I'd like it to be a surprise when it's finished! Obviously I'll post it once it's framed, delivered, and hung but until then... let your imagination run wild!

i'm learneding

To round off my amazingly productive Sunday, I went on a rampage mission to find a piece of plywood that would be awesome enough for my triptych painting. I started my search in the garage, since most awesome things end up being stashed in there. Behind the motorcycle, garden hose and endless amounts of crazy giant mountain bike tires, I found wooden gold: a 1” thick piece of plywood that measured around 12”x50”. F****** SCORE!

Now... I know that I'm not the best when it comes to woodwork (that's what she said!) but I really wanted to figure out this frame by myself. Having everything evenly spaced is über important to this self-proclaimed balance/proportion freak, so I started my measurements with the 12” length. HERE COMES THE MATH PEOPLE. The biggest painting I have is 9” in length, so that would leave me a 1.5” border around the painting. (12-9=3and3/2=1.5YAY)   However, I wanted the frame to overlap the paintings slightly, so I increased the border size to 1.75”.

Using the 1.75” border size as my guide, I continued to place the smaller two paintings next to the bigger one, adjusting the placements until I came up with a good configuration. That last sentence made me sound MUCH smarter than I expected it to. After drawing my guidelines, I was ready to step outside and cut the s*** out of my plywood.

Next, I used a LARGE drill bit to drill 12 holes into the plywood, one for each corner of the three paintings. I decided to use the jigsaw, since A: I know how to use it, and B: I knew where it was in the garage. After about 30 minutes, I had myself a rough-cut frame! My electric sander did all the dirty work smoothing it out, and now I’m ready to stain and assemble the final piece!

Three cheers for trying and succeeding!!