Bonnie Birds!

I’ve been watching Jolene create her fabric finches for months now, I suppose it was inevitable that I would end up taking some inspiration from them and feeding it into what I’m doing myself … indeed, Jolene alluded to as much here.  The WIP previews she gave there though have long since been finished, and discarded on the basis that they were, well, rubbish!

I’m rather proud of the these ones though, the refined and finished product if you will.  Being me, they’re predominantly papier mache with a bit of wire and armature thrown in for good measure before being finished in acrylics and a tough high gloss varnish.

The design is based on some rather fabulous silk that Jolene bought from a seller in India for another project that she’s working on, also from discussions with Jolene about Paisley pattern – a very simplified tear drop has been adopted for the wings here – and I’ve also been listening to some Deva Premal which has no doubt fed in to the general feel of the pieces … although I’ve no idea where she’s from!?!

OK, google sorted out the latter one there … she’s from Germany and wiki says:

is a musician known for her meditative spiritual New Age music, which puts ancient Hindu mantras into atmospheric, contemporary settings.

Am I becoming an old hippy?  Actually never-mind, people were accusing me of being an old hippy before I was even 20 … actually I think the term they used was “weirdo”!!

These Bonnie Birds are available to purchase in out Coriandr shop.

Gruber ~ Demon in a waistcoat

I had promised to have this finished by April 2009, so obviously I’m delighted to have finished it before it goes a full year past my own self-imposed ‘due date’!

Like most of his erstwhile and largely forgotten friends Gruber is keen on world domination, although it’s perhaps telling that he and his cohorts are largely forgotten given their compete ineptitude when it comes to matters of actually achieving world domination.  Indeed his most well known cousin, Gravalash, was defeated by his inability to get off a high shelf and whilst such trifling difficulties are unlikely to be of much difficulty to this fellow the complexities of reaching the door handle have limited the range of Gruber and the fulfilment of his innocuous plans.

He dreams of breaking loose and running free as he once did, although he is still haunted by the nightmare of attempting to cross a field of snow that proved to be too cold for his tippy-toes, alas what else is left for him other than to stand at the window and wave at the post lady …

Gruber stands at 18.5″ / 47cm tall, is 16.25″ / 41cm from the tip of one horn to the tip of the other, and is approx 11″ / 28cm deep.

He is available for sale, to a good (and secure) home in our Coriandr shop, here – additional images are also there.

Papier mache wall art

It’s been commented on in the past that there are strange things going on in the dark recesses of my mind, that they seem to bleed out into the light through what I create … I think ‘they’ may have a point.

I seem to have a raft of canvasses lying around and despite repeated attempts to paint something of any worth on them I seem to fail and fail again.  The canvas here has been used so many times now that I can’t recall how many images lie beneath this final effort, perhaps it’s a furious amalgam of all that went before, a seething anger at the ineptitude slapped on the canvas below.

Whatever it is, using a canvas as a base for some wall art/sculpture is an avenue of interest to me and something I feel sure I will pursue further at some future point.  In the meantime I can think of at least two (more conventional) sculptures that deserve to be finished after well over a years worth of idling!

Wall art W.I.P.

It’s always a bit of struggle for me to get back into the swing of the craft thing following the festive frivolities, of course it hasn’t helped that we were on emergency fuel rations until our delivery arrived Wednesday and I had to spend the next three days shifting it up the hill to the house … that’s another story though!

Currently I’m working on this piece of wall art that I last picked up during late November or December and following the break I’ve lacked any kind of motivation to pick it up again.  Losing momentum can be a real struggle at times and until you can gather yourself to move on projects can idle and die, this can be a real issue with materials like papier mache which require long drying periods in between adding layers or building up texture or depth.

The concept isn’t exactly a new one but it’s one I’ve been keen to experiment with and following my fourth sub-standard painting on this canvas I decided it was time to use it for something other than painting … I suppose you might suggest that the previous efforts have been consumed by the character emerging from the canvas now.  He certainly looks like he might have a touch of indigestion!

Mushroom bowls in blue – reworked

Regular readers may well recall these bowls in their original form, you can see them here.  As then they were blue, and they are finished with varnish.  What is different is the depth of the ’sub-coat’ I apply to these pieces, the method in which the paint was applied and finally the varnish used is a much tougher and much higher gloss variety.

In all honesty I was never satisfied with the bowls, despite the compliments (thanks!), and when I brought them out at one of our recent craft fayres I was compelled to immediately re-wrap them and return them to the crate from whence they came!

With everything that’s been going on of late I struggled to get them finished, but the final coat of varnish is dry and we even managed a wee drop of winter sunshine to get some piccies taken … sunshine makes me happy!  Anyway, here are the bowls:

click the images for full-view

Mushroom bowls in red ~ the final set

This is the final set of mushroom inspired paper pottery bowls, the other sets can be seen here and here.

All three sets were made using the same set of moulds, although despite this I think they are all quite different in terms of shape, of course the variation in colour also helps to accentuate the differences.  Personally my favourite set is the brown/tan version, although I really like the this final set too for which I used a different varnish that has a subtle lilac hue to it which works really well with the reddy colour.

I’ll be making some more sets of bowls in due course, although I think I’ll aim for something quite different from these sets, maybe something a little larger, although equally as organic in feel … but more of that later. 

Coming in the more immediate future we have a sample or two from Jolene’s newly created ‘make-it-yourself’ bird hanger set which will be available at the forthcoming fairs we’re attending and we also have some more of her Sock Creatures.

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!

Mushroom bowls in blue ~ another set of three

This is the second set of bowls I’ve made along the mushroom lines, of course mushrooms don’t traditionally come in shades of blue, but then traditionally bowls don’t come in the form of mushrooms.  I have been keen to experiment with colour and whilst I was initially sceptical about making these blue they are beginning to grow on me … not that I have some sort of fungal infection you understand, it’s just that I’m coming to like the bowls!

These bowls are made on the same moulds as the previous set, and despite this you can readily see that the bowls themselves are rather different from one another not only in colour but also in shape and weight.  The bowls shown here have a much lighter or finer finish to them than their predecessors, although each is as robust as the other, I was mildly concerned that the blue bowls would be rather flimsy so I was pleased to discover that the finish I use gives a rigidity to the edges that you might not otherwise expect.

please click on images to see a larger image

I have one final set of these in the pipeline, in fact, I’ve already removed them from their moulds and the moulds are no more.

Mushroom bowls ~ a set of three

This is the first finished set of paper pottery bowls that I mentioned earlier (below) when I was showing the ‘little red bowl’.  The original inspiration for these bowls is obviously mushrooms, although the notion to create a set or two was borne of an earlier single bowl I made which is available in the shop, here.

I’m rather pleased with the outcome although with the weather being truely evil of late and in the absence of a light box I’ve really struggled to get any pictures.  I only managed to get  these photo’s during a very brief interlude in the weather that only really lasted long enough for me to set up my ’studio’.

More mushroom bowls coming soon, I’m experimenting a bit with alternative colours, so expect something a wee bit different.

Paper pottery – a little red bowl

It’s been quite some time since I did any paper pottery and it was something i was pleased to get back to a two or three weeks ago when I decided I needed a rest from the ‘plant pokes’ I’d been working on.  The piece shown here is the first of nine pieces I’ve been working on, this one is the most individual of the set and I’ll presenting a couple of simple ’spring bowls’ in a few days time as well and two sets of three ‘mushroom bowls’ … those however are for later.

I’m relatively pleased with the way this has turned out, especially since it is the first I’ve done in some time, the simple colour scheme is probably borne of an abstract ‘ladybird bowl’ that sits in our window sill and was one of the first pieces I made a few years ago.  I suspect though that a more immediate influence has been the scenes of autumn that have been surrounding us for the last month or so, lots of reds, oranges, yellows and browns this year.  Very nice.

… and a couple of fun photo’s …

… obviously when i say, ‘fun’, I mean it in the, ‘I need to get out more’ sense!

In terms of uses for such a bowl, well it is largely decorative, although we use bowls like this for keeping nick-nacks and keys in and so on