Disintegration Manifestation, or sumfink........

A couple of weeks back I was nosing around blogland feeling a little bored and in need of some high jinx. When I am in this mood I look up people I follow for one reason or the other, and then wander off through their links. I wouldn't go so far to say I'm cyber-stalking, but it does guarantee I stumble across interesting and art related blogs a lot more easily than just random meanderings. Well, what did I find.....

Over on Harry Bell's Boogie Street blog (that phrase reminds me of a heady mixture of those scrummy Haribo sweets, and the guilty pleasure that is the Baccharat song of 'Oh yes Sir! I can boogie'!) there was a great entry under 'Parcel Post' which I read with interest. Have a look see if you can, as not only is the art great but Harry has a nice turn of phrase too, so it really is an enjoyable blog.

His blog is especially nice though if you finish this blog first!  

It was about an art idea posted by a fellow blogger Seth from www.thealteredpage.blogspot.com involving making up bundles of all sorts of things and then burying them, submerging them, hanging them up etc. outside to 'disintegrate' basically. Once you have made up your bundle you stick it wherever you want and leave it there in the rain, snow and shine  until May 1st. You post a photo of your homemade package with contents on your blog, submit a link to Seth at The Altered Page ( full details are posted under 'Disintegration Manifestation, about halfway down the page ) and then come May Day, open your bundle and take a photo of the result to post on your blog. What marvellous fun! There are so many people now doing this that it has become a huge participation ( or should that be 'precipitation!') event, which I always enjoy joining in with. I have to admit I like the science of it all too. So here are my bundles- well, I couldn't just do one now, could I? And at the very least if I don't have any work to post come May 1st I'll have back up photos of old rotten grot to stick online as in-fill!

 

Bundle 1- paper poppy, shiny penny, a winning £2 lottery ticket exp., thick gold leaf sheet, felt floor protector, a cream mount, 2007 diary (I only wrote in it twice-Samuel Pepys I'm not!) glass slide, miniature card and envelope, pink and white tissue paper, purple and white chalk pastels, red oil pastel crayon, 2 wooden stretchers, string and a neon blue hairpiece bought in a moment's madness! Wrapped up and buried half-submerged in soil.

Bundle 2- a silk painting experiment, gluten free fruit loaf ( ooh, if anything deserves to disintegrate...), a ginger and lemon teabag (yum,) a toffee eclair sweet ( given them up,) chocolate biscuit (sob, given them up,) coffee (wail, given it up,) washpowder tablets ( cannot do without them!) A sponge (used at home and for work so v.i.p,) Cif oxyclean wipes ( each and everyone of them a little friend!) and last but not least, A CUDDLY TOY! (Good game, good game!) all wrapped up and hanging in the wind. Now it is just a matter of waiting.....

Six times table trouble.....

I remember learning these way back in time when nylon flares were all the rage and brown and orange colourways were seen as elegant and fashionable. Today's post however has nothing to do with mathematics and algebraic systems... it's all about 'when art goes bad' (cue dramatic drum roll!)  I wasn't going to mention the bad bits here on blogland as I like to keep things viewed through my Panglossian, rose coloured spectacles whenever possible. Common courtesy though wins because I have a BIG tip to pass on, that I learnt the hard way and wouldn't want anyone making the same mistake. 'What did she do?' I hear, from at least one person hopefully out there. Well.....

I have spent all week painting 19" round glass tops for tables which are proving popular now spring is a-coming. I 'draw' (using pipettes) my design on, wait for that to dry and then pour in the colours over/inside the design using solvent based glass paints. When all is dry the design gets covered with sticky-backed, white vinyl for protection and boosting the brightness of the colours. The whole thing gets flipped over, and 'voila' you're the owner of one pretty table top. That's the theory anyway. I used a new paint for the drawn design- a metallic, water based glass paint that was of 'superior quality' according to it's headline. It dried nicely, and didn't react when the oil based paint was applied. The vinyl was then placed on, sticking perfectly to the underside......for about 10 seconds. The vinyl then disappointingly started to peel back with all the metallic work attached to it, sticking only where the oily stuff was. A bit demoralising seeing as I had six of these dried out on my worktop. I had to strip them all back down to blanks again, whilst Mike drove to get replacement paints. A costly and frustrating mistake indeed that I hope no one else repeats. So, the moral of the story is don't stick a vinyl backing onto water based paints.... EVER!

The picture posted is one of the table tops (a correct one!) that has been glued onto a mirror backing for an african themed commission.     

A little log cabin in the Swiss Alps...........

Ok. Not really. Not even with eyes set at a hard squint and a huge dollop of make believe on board could you pretend this is where Heidi and her plaits live. It is however where I shall be living when I am not at work! Yes, we finally finished off the garden studio to hold the glasswork overspill from the workshop. There is even a cubby hole/nest behind the shelving for me to paint in, and electric for lights and laptop. How 'Des. Res.' is that? It will also come in handy for inviting people along to out of hours for commissions, or sales reps for new lines etc. As it stands at the moment it also makes a handy parcel store for the postman, and somewhere nice and dry for the bigger of the spiders.... why do I never find small manageable ones?

The Workshop/Gallery has been going well and art across the board is moving at a welcome pace. Highlight of the week for me was a silk painting that I had put up on the wall 10 minutes previously, being snapped up immediately. I didn't even get a chance to photograph it so you'll all have to take my word for it that was absolutely gorgeous ( it was a quartet of silk scenes depicting the seasons, for the curious minded.) Mike's highlight was putting together a website in record time to help out a customer who had been let down by another. Unfortunately, where there are highs there usually is a low too, and for the last ten days I have had a doozie of a headache on and off which has made it very difficult to look at computer screens, read anything, remember anything or be sociable, so blogging 'out' and feeling sorry for myself 'in.' Headaches have now made my H8 list, along with spiders, not being believed when I am actually telling the truth, people touching my collarbones, and ANYTHING that makes me cry apart from laughter. I'm not terribly keen on Cliff Richard either but that's a different story.......

Painting and premonition....

Inspiration does not come easily sometimes just sat at my desk, so I trot off further afield so see what goes. My recent wanderings have led me to the river here as you can see from previous photos, so with that in mind I created this abstract silk cushion cover loosely based on swollen, dark undercurrents and islands interspersing the flow. I chose woodwork class at school instead of needlework, and my, did that come back to haunt me. It took me nearly 4 hours to sew up by hand! I must be one of the few females not to own a sewing machine- plenty of power tools mind, but no Singer. If I'm honest though it wouldn't have taken half the time if I hadn't stopped for boredom breaks every other minute. Or coffee. Or chatting. Or looking out the window.... you get the idea. Anyway I digress as ever. What I'm failing to do is explain the title of this post in connection with the photo. Well guess what happened after I had finished the cushion amd placed it all a-plumped in it's spot? Yep. The river broke it's banks and completely flooded the area down here. Mike and I spent ages siliconing our defences in place, and putting everything up high out of harms way. Waiting was the hardest, but fortunately the water only got as far as the bottom of the step to the door. I now know why we can't get flood insurance here, as we watched the water ebb back to the river.

Note to self- paint a sunny scene next. 

The first of many

We had a nice day's trading today- and sold an oil painting I had completed of the Bradford on Avon Bridge ( the Lock-up view) a few months earlier. It had been pointed out in the community website too unawares, so from our point of view it has been a good boost  for a local artist painting a local scene... exactly the criteria the customer was after. I now have a 'hole to fill' on the wall which means I can blow the dust off my filberts and get on with another oil. It feels such a time ago that I am genuinely looking forward to it... there is just this matter of finishing off with these 'few' silk blanks I ordered in.

I need to grow another set of arms....

Bradford on Avon in the snow part 2!

At the risk of looking like I haven't done a jot of work all day (moi?!) here are a few of the photos I took before settling down to a day of marbling and painting. The atmosphere as I walked around was truly uplifting and joyous. The local schools were shut and roads to work impassable, so child and adult stood together for an impromptu hookie day in the snow! Tomorrow will be time enough to post workings, but for now... enjoy!

( my favourite has to be the duck....I wonder if the others will tell her that she 'has a little something on her top lip? )

Bradford on Avon in the snow....

Hmm! Slight stretching of the truth in the title there. It should read ' just-the-Tithebarn-area-as-that-is-as-far-as-I-went-before-icicles-formed-on-my-tearducts-and-my-feet-felt-like-they-had-been-dipped-in-nitrogen!' but that doesn't make for a snappy headline. I was also supposed to  be working really hard too, on getting new stock ready, but hey! It's snowing! I smugly justified bunking off by telling my poor, overworked husband that 'who knows? Maybe one of the photos will be good enough to sell' as I left, gaily stomping and crunching away in the icy whiteness. It only took 10 minutes before the heavily-entrenched guilt complex I have been nurturing from years at a strict boarding school set in, and I headed back. I'm rubbish- I even cooked and did all the laundry etc later that night too...Mike doesn't have to say a word!

One of the joys of being down here at the workshop is the abundence of birdlife. I am not a twitcher by any means, but am constantly fascinated by the comings and goings of our little feathered friends. I even know what a few are, like the robin pictured above. He has been captured at an unflattering angle showing off the plumpest of fronts since Jessica Rabbit. I'm still not convinced that it isn't a turkey that has been coloured in with felttip. There would have been a couple of photos of young bluetits too, but the robin has been very territorial over the Tesco 'healthy eating' seed crackers I keep throwing around, and he's chased them off. I'll just have to watch out the window for further opportunities- oh, it's a hard life......