Winter Drawers On. . . ;-) Birds, Beads and more Stickiness

Fieldfare

Redwing

Winter Drawers. . .

Well, we had the first bit of what passes for cold weather here in the Eastern bit of the South East of England. The winter visitors told me it was going to be a cold day. We had a flock of about 40 Fieldfares come through.
Fieldfares are large thrushes that come over from Northern Europe when the weather gets cold there. They overwinter here, as do some smaller thrushes called Redwing, (due to the red patches under their wings). I am pretty sure there were a bunch of them at the end of the garden, but as I have yet to find my binoculars after the move I have to make an assumption based on the fact that there were several of them, they weren't blackbirds and you don't get flocks of song thrushes, which is the nearest native bird to them.
Identifying birds is a process of elimination based on knowledge and experience generally.

As the colder weather is starting, I have put out bird feeders and have been agreeably surprised by the amount of interest they got. Being further out in the country we don't usually get many of the common garden birds we used to get at our last house, which was at the edge of a large village. I assume that there aren't enough gardens out here, and that the natural supply of food in the hedges etc means wild birds don't frequent gardens very much. They like the bird feeders though. I sat at the kitchen table and watched a Great Spotted Woodpecker on the peanut feeder. Magic ;-) Except I now realise that I need to wear my TV/driving glasses to focus at that distance. . . sigh. . . Getting old . . . ish. . .

DIY stuff has taken a lot of my would be beading time this last week or two. I've been ripping out an old sink in the kitchen that was fitted in about 1977 and was situated at the opposite end of the room to the cooker. No idea why it was sited there, but it was seriously impractical as well as seriously grotty. All gone now, and the new, I mean 'reclaimed' ceramic 'butler' sink we got really cheap from the local reclamation yard is in, near the cooker, and functioning perfectly despite my plumbing ;-)

But enough boring house stuff, here's some boring bead stuff.

Spottines beats stickiness every time. .

I have been exploring the stickiness I mentioned in my previous post, and have worked out a few things. One being that, yes, it does depend which ink and paper your prints are on. The photocopier at my local library makes copies that don't get sticky. I printed the same images that have gone sticky in the past from other machines, and they don't get sticky, so it's not the colours or the amount of black or any of the other vague possibilities I had wondered about. I have also worked out a process to stop the stickiness. I'm not going to tell you what that is, but it does mean that I can finally get going on a tutorial for my image wrapped beads, now I can get consistent results. All will be revealed therein in due course.

Non stickiness from the library photocopier. Comparatively expensive though. . .

The thing that worries me slightly, is that my images are the major part of those beads, and I'm not teaching how to make those images, just how to transfer successfully and wrap successfully too. I wonder if people will feel misled in some way. Ay well, we shall see.

The result of an interesting variation of the transfer technique. More possibilities. . .

Next time, if you are good, I shall tell you about the jackdaw that got trapped down the chimney. The other chimney to the bees, luckily, otherwise things might have got far too interesting. . .
J x

Bees down the Chimney, and Image Transfer Fun

I have known for a month or two that there was some sort of bee/wasp activity up at the top of our chimney stack. You can see them weaving about in that particular way they have when coming in to land, as it were. About ten or twenty weaving around at any one time. I was hoping it wasn't wasps, as they would make their presence felt around the fruit trees and around our outside dining table a bit too much. And that many wasps coming and going would mean a very big nest. As we were relatively undisturbed by wasps I guessed it was bees. No problem, I like bees. They don't bother us and we don't bother them. Live and let live etc etc.
So I didn't put two and two together when for the past four or five mornings I have found six or seven, very soporific and sad bees in our living room, crawling around the french windows to the garden. I was puzzled. I couldn't work out how they would have got in from outside as they weren't there when I shut the doors up at night. I couldn't locate anywhere in the floor or wall or skirting board etc where they might have come from. Odd. . .
Then my wife heard a faint buzzing coming from the wood burner. Mystery solved. . .
Our chimney is lined. It has a metal tube all the way down it which ends in the back of the wood burner, which is not in use yet and the doors firmly shut. The rest of the chimney space is filled with that insulating foam stuff (I think). I guess one or two bees fly into the top of the tube and fly or fall down all the way to the back or wood burner. From there they manage to find a way out and make a break for the french windows. Not sure what bees do in the winter, but I won't open that door until the weather gets colder just in case.
We should try to dissuade them from nesting up there really. Not least because we need some remedial work done on the flashing round that particular chimney stack, and I don't think a roofer would want to risk disturbing them. I shall consult our friend who keeps bees, he will have some advice I hope.

Anyway, bee issues aside, I have been forging ahead on the bead front. Trying to get image transfers to stop being sticky for long enough to handle them without smudging and getting the ink transferring to my fingers. . . I think I have solved it. I managed to wrap images round a round bead without smudging. Seams were another issue, but there are ways round them too, which I am exploring. I want to make a short tutorial on image transfers and what to do with them. Or at least take you through what I do with them to get the look I get. If I mention it here I might feel honour bound to actually do it. . . ;-)

So I have made a series of image transfer tube beads using somewhat more complex and random digital images of mine. They have turned out quite nicely, allowing that the relative neatness takes some getting used to for me. Never fear, the compulsion to grunge things up is never far away. I just want to know how neat the process can be. That gives me options. I like options. . .
'til next time,
Jon x

Through and Through - Rough Image Transfer Adventures

I've been working out various things this past week or so. Refining how to make 'through drilled' or at least, 'through holed' flat tile beads without them having to be unattractively thick. I have got it pretty much sorted.
I bake a thin image trans tile, then press another unbaked blank onto the underneath with a bead pin or similar in between the two layers to provide the stringing hole (once removed, which I do before baking, though afterwards would probably be OK too). The unbaked blank has to be less than the thickness of the bead pin or similar for obvious reasons. The bead is then baked again. This process avoids having to drill a hole through a solid flat bead, which would be a very delicate operation unless the bead was quite thick, which, as I mentioned before would be undesirable.
Not an exact science and not the neatest result in the world, but if I felt it was important enough I could neaten them up more than I choose to. The look suits the general vibe my work has. Kind of artily and enthusiastically rough round the edges, "Rustic". Though that word seems to be less important as a tag according to my etsy stats. . . "tribal" and "boho" get more hits. .
I made smaller versions with the smallest cutter in my set, and made them double sided. It was OK to make them a bit thicker, I thought, as they look quite nice a bit chunky. . .

The image trans technique involves using clear liquid poly clay and a heat gun, and is best done outside or in a well ventilated space. Kato polymer clay, which happens to be the trans liquid I have, has a particular smell that I don't get on with, especially when it burns. . . (oops. .) I'm not going to go into details about the technique as you can probably work out what I did. I like the effect, though I shall take a break from my experimenting with images and do something else for a while as I don't want to risk getting too obsessed and repeating myself.

The images themselves are my own digital creations, this time less geometric repeat pattern orientated and more random organic in nature. 

They still have this old/new conflict going on, which is fun I think. Ancient looking things with non ancient images on them.

I need to leave image trans for a bit and get back to texture based work I think, but finding new approaches and ideas. That will need some thinking about, and some playing with. 

I might list a few more things in my shop and then leave it for a week or so and see what I want to do next. 

I'll keep you posted,

Jon x