Spring inspired bowls

I’ve been meaning to make these for an age and whilst the inspiration is very much borne of the spring time the design is based on an earlier bowl I made way back when, here. 

I don’t know about you, but as we prepare to plunge into the depths of winter (haven’t we already plunged?) it seems like a remarkably good idea to do everything we can to remind ourselves that the long dark nights and the miserable weather only last until spring … actually the weather never really improves beyond getting a mite warmer, it does at least get lighter though!

ATC Challenge Swap

Gosh!  We’ve been so busy recently, it’s hard to know what to talk about.  I’ve been feeling pretty ill this weekend so haven’t yet managed to put together the pattern for the owl brooches.  It’ll come later this week as I start to feel more like my old self again…that along with some instructions for turning magazines into paper bags, which is what we’ve done instead of buying paper bags for the upcoming craft fair we’re getting involved with.  We are so busy here that our house is starting to feel like a two man factory!

Today, I offer you the ATCs I made for the ATC Challenge Swap at SwapBot…

acrylic

watercolour, salt and seed beads

watercolour

watercolour and pencil

watercolour and pencil

inchies, skinnies, kittens and owls

I know it’s an odd combination, but it’s what I’ve been keeping busy with over the past week or so.

Inchies

Inchies are 1″x1″ pieces of art.  The challenge is definitely in getting something interesting on a small piece of board.  In this instance I created some 101 Dalmation inchies for a user on swapbot who wanted to give them as a parting gift to her friend.  These have gone all the way to Singapore!

I wouldn’t really class these as art, I had fun making them nonetheless.

Skinnies

Second is the Skinny I made for the Simple Skinny swap, again via swapbot.  Skinnies are 3″ x 5″ pieces of art.  I have been meaning to have a go at the one stroke painting technique for a long time now and while this isn’t a particularly good example of the artform it’s something I am very proud of.  I sewed on some seed beads to bring out the centre of the flowers.  It really is much better in the flesh as it were.  I hope the recipient likes it…it’s gone to America.

Clearly I need to practice stems a lot more.  Or, maybe I just need new paint brushes!

Kittens

Most excitingly is the news of Beryl, our cat, giving birth to two kittens four weeks ago.  Sadly one of them died and we have been hand rearing the other due to Beryl not producing enough milk.  He’s doing exceptionally well now and we have finally felt able to name him today…meet Kipper (named by a three year old, can you tell!)

I love this picture, taken by Alasdair.  He’s a nightmare to get food into but he is good fun for the rest of the time.

Owls

A sneaky preview at something that will hopefully be coming soon to the patterns page of the site.  I’ve been making felt brooches and love the quickness of the craft.  This owl was sent to a swapper in Israel and I will, with a bit of luck and time be adding the pattern for this and a couple of other brooches in the next few weeks…keep checking back, they are really simple to make and require very few materials.

Last piece of news is that we are preparing for our first craft fayre next month so are very busy and very excited at the same time.  May it be the first of many, eh?

Alasdair has just finished another carving, this time the wood is from a Cherry tree.  He should be letting you see it very soon.  Also I’ve made some more felt birds, this time I’ve made one from cotton fabric so it has a frayed edge.  I like the effect.  We need some sunshine for optimum photography though…I thought it was summer!

Abstract tree and flower scene ~ acrylic painting

I’m not sure why, but painting seems to be something I come back to time and again.  I’ve noted previously that it can be a relaxing process and despite the obvious realisation that I’ll never create a masterpiece (it’s so passe anyway?!) I still enjoy that process.  Even when my vision comes up against that brick wall that is my talentless daubing of paint on canvas!

If nothing else it does provide me with an opportunity to practice simple decorative designs that I may begin to use as a theme on my sculptures, the flowers for example have featured previously on my Spring Time Bowl and the floral dancer and I have a feeling they will be incorporated into future pieces in the future.

Currently I have a few papier mache sculptures underway, each a demon or figurative sculpture and each temporarily on hold while I work on a couple of wood carvings, one in Elm which is nearing completion and which has already taken up over 10 hours of my time and another in Cherry which I’ve yet to start, they will however be coming soon.

papier mache spring flower bowl

For one reason or another this bowl has taken me much longer to complete than I would have otherwise hoped, even trying to get the pictures for the blog was a bit hit and miss, it was either too gloomy outside or too bright and seemed to necessitate abandoning whatever I was doing to run outside and get a few quick snaps while the light was right.  Out of about 30 or 40 pics the ones here are the only two I was even marginally pleased with!

The bowl (above) itself is just short of 6 inches tall and has a diameter of about 6 inches, it was constructed after my usual fashion using paper strips to build up the basic shape around a couple of strategically placed balloons, which I was using for armature on this occasion.  I also gave the bowl a lip initially although it was proving to irritating to keep so I used some pulp to bulk it out, removing the lip, before sanding the whole thing down.

The bud feet are essentially just shaped pulp which were again overlaid with paper strips before being sanded.

The whole pot was primed with emulsion before I added the various layers of colour to give the background green, I used kids poster paint for this, although I don’t recommend it as secondary coats tend to lift the first coats which can be hugely annoying and it can take a long time to get the effect you’re looking for … I think it worked in the end although my frustration at the time may explain my receding hairline!

Acrylics were used to paint on the flower design (see detail photo below), these were loosely based on a design Jolene has been using in her embroidery.  I also used acrylics to provide the block of colour for the earth and to build up the slightly dappled effect for the sky.  The whole bowl was finished with a few coats of varnish.

I had considered offering the bowl for sale, however, a radiator leak upstairs and my subsequent irritation while trying to fix and finish the bowl kind of ruined the finish in some small areas and to be honest they are beyond my will to repair…

… aside from the trauma of this bowl though I’m also working on a small ( 7-8 inches tall ) character piece that I should finish in the next few weeks.