First Year 'Houseversary', Timely Perseids, Lack of Jam and More Uncertainty about Earrings

Our house from the end of the garden. The paint job we did made a disproportionate amount of difference. 

It's our 'Houseversary'! We've been here exactly 12 months! We absolutely love it here. We couldn't be happier ;-) All the stress and anxiety of the move has turned out to be totally worth it. . . 

We wouldn't do it again, mind, no matter how worth it it might ultimately turn out to be, but that's academic, as I can't see a reason why we would ever want to move again. Like I said before, we both feel that the only way we would leave this place is in a box. . .

view across the pond to the conservatory

What made the moving in day even more memorable than it might ordinarily have been was that it coincided with the peak of the Perseids meteor shower.

That night we dragged our exhausted selves and our cane sofa onto the lawn and sprawled on that, sipping prosecco and watching sporadic shooting stars whizz across a clear starry sky. . . This year we did the same again, only it was a bit colder and less clear, and we had no prosecco. . . but we had just got back from the pub and as luck would have it we timed it just right. There was just enough clear sky to see the show. Until we started to get cold and went to bed. ;-)

I hope you got to see it too.

The 'lack of jam' thing refers, jokingly, (ha ha hee hee etc) not to a shortage of preserved fruit condiment, which would be a serious matter, but to the monthly jam night at a pub in the next village (an event which also had no connection to preserved fruit condiment). I hadn't been before so I was feeling a bit nervous about the whole thing as I lugged my bass guitar down there, but, due to it being the time of year when many people are away on their holidays, there was a distinct lack of musicians. 'Dearth' would be a better word ;-) We found only the organiser and his wife there. Undeterred, we had a drink and a good chat with them and will come back next month when folks will be back from vacations etc, we hope. They were both artists too and were very nice people, so that was a good connection made.

Anyway, or 'Any road up' as my wife says when in Yorkshire mode, this is turning into a bit of a diary so, without further ado I will get onto the earring stuff. . .

'Biscuit' charms, polymer clay image transfer with wooden backs, with copper jump rings and oxidised copper ear wires

As a non earring wearing male, I do feel as though any foray I make into earring construction involves a lot of guesswork and certain amount of copying what others do in order to get things 'right' (whatever that is). This makes me a bit nervous about it all. I've posted about this earring insecurity before, which didn't seem to move me forward even though I got many supportive comments. Hopefully I have worked through the anxiety and now can just make the blooming things, leaving the question of whether anyone except me likes them up to fate/life and not worry about it.

rough polymer clay beads on flattened copper wire with copper ear wires

I have realised that ear wires can be any shape I like, as long as they fulfil their purpose and look good at the same time.

Round image trans beads on oxidised copper ear wires

I think that certain amount of eccentricity can be a good thing too. Probably. Well, me being me it's going to have to be. ;-)

distressed wooden beads on up cycled nails with steel wire wrap and titanium ear wires

Upcycling is fine too. And using non standard materials. Well, I think it's fine and I am working by my rules. . .

Textured polymer clay charms with textured beads on oxidised copper wire.

And, it's ok to make more conventional looking earrings as long as everything works well together and there is enough quirkiness in the choice of beads. . . For me, 'conventional' counts as a radical departure from the norm, being one of those annoying people who just has to be 'different' for all sorts of unexamined reasons. . . :-)

I'm still enjoying making earring charms/beads too. Trying different types of image and treatments.

DIY permitting I'll continue my earring exploration and see where it gets me. I mean, if others don't find my beads useful I can always use them myself ;-)

And to finish, a garden update. Not that you wanted one, but you're getting it anyway. . .

Pears!

We will be inundated with various kinds of fruit soon. The pear tree is looking promising, but the pears won't be ripe for a while. The gooseberries and blackcurrants have just finished, but we do have ripe victoria plums, early apples, mulberries and the last of the redcurrents. Damsons, greengages, medlars, quince, and the other apples to follow. Lots of apples. . . I've never lived anywhere with so much fruit involved ;-)

I tried to make cider last year but it was a disaster, I will get more serious about it this year.

On the veg front, the asparagus finished a while ago and so did the artichokes, though we hardly ate any of them. Right now we have potatoes, courgettes, tomatoes and beans all demanding to be dug up/picked/cut including some very red potatoes. I'm pleased with those as I actually grew them myself rather than inherited the previous owner's plantings.

Very red potatoes. They cook quickly and tend to fall apart, but taste really nice. I must try cooking them more slowly and carefully. I'm too used to supermarket spuds. . .

On the DIY front, for those interested, a minority group for sure, the fake panelling is nearly done. The colour is a darker, greyer turquoise-lish colour than in the pic but I had to use flash which bleached it out somewhat.
Next we finish the painting, get some pictures up and construct or buy a radiator cover of some kind. And we lose the green carpet of course! Yech. . .

My round stones collection and bust of Beethoven are in place already. .

So, onwards and upwards as they say. 

Even though Etsy is, perplexingly, still not what it was and my new shop and site is not visited as much as I had hoped, I will plough on. . . I need to research ways of amassing more 'traffic', but it's still early days and these things take time.

Jon x

The Secret Life of Biscuits (A Tutorial of Sorts), Stone Pelicans and an Interesting New Glue. . .

Wood or Polymer clay?

Well, I've been horribly busy with a long discussed and procrastinated over DIY project - vis, Putting up false wood panelling in the hall of our house. False, because I am using MDF to make a series of 'frames', the inside of which is the plain wall. Paint it all and you wouldn't know that it wasn't all wood, and if you are careful, you can make it look like it's been there a long time. . .

You see, our house dates from circa 1780, but you wouldn't really know to see it on the inside apart from the proportions, nice high ceilings etc. It was messed about with a fair bit over the years, including being, what our local builder calls, 'farmerised', which is a process of covering over or ripping out old clay tile floors, likewise with old inglenook fireplaces, bannisters etc and generally getting rid of rustic charm or Georgian detail wherever it can be found and replacing with lino, plasterboard, york stone and strange wallpaper ;-) Something farmers seem to have got the blame for. Well, it was a farmhouse so I guess in this case farmers were the culprits. . . We are lucky in that the house wasn't totally trashed, and that the previous owner uncovered a nice tile floor and a previously boxed in inglenook fireplace when they bought the place forty years ago.

Our task, as we see it, is to pretend that none of the farmerising happened, and reconstruct a kind of faux Georgian-ish interior. Not making it a slavish restoration project as such, but more of a creative injection of charm and interest in line with our ideas of what might have been there before and what we would like to see, and all in line with a low budget too!

Work in progress, plus kitten

Anyway, the reason I am wittering on about it is that I am finding that my DIY excursions often have a the side effect of giving my ideas for beads etc. 

The MDF 'frames' I am making are joined together using something called a 'biscuit joiner'. This tool makes a groove in the piece of MDF or other wood you wish to join to another piece of same, in which you made a similar groove. Using the same tool set up the same means that your grooves should line up perfectly and be in exactly the right place for the two pieces to join up seamlessly by using a 'biscuit' which fits nicely in the two grooves. It works well, once you know what you are doing (I'm getting there. . .) These 'biscuits are like small, flat ovals of plywood, and are of a size and shape that to my mind could make a good template for a polymer clay bead/charm. (15mm by 19mm by 4mm)

size 10 biscuit - 15 x 19 x 4mm

Above is what they look like. You could view the following as a sort of tutorial or at least something to try if you come across a biscuit or two, (100 for about ten pounds online) follow along. . .

They are made of three layers, like plywood, and are maybe a bit thick, so I tried carefully splitting one down the middle with a craft knife/tissue blade. 

Split in half to expose nice wood texture and reduce thickness

I liked the splintered wood texture that resulted, so firstly I tried pressing that into a piece of raw polymer clay as a texture stamp, then cutting round it with a craft knife and baking the resulting shape. 

Once it was baked I decided to use the wooden half biscuit as a backing piece for it, so I stuck it, splintered texture side out, onto the back. Actually, I used the other half of the biscuit I split earlier as it had a slightly different texture pattern but the principle is the same. 

Then I had some fun treating the surface with alcohol inks, sanding it off, etc. It turned out looking cool, but a lot like wood. I wasn't sure if this was a good thing or not, or if it was what I wanted, as if it looked like wood I might as well not have used polymer clay at all ;-)

I painted the back too. I used acrylic inks this time, the coverage was better on wood than alc inks I found.

The real wood back of the faux wood bead

Following on from that my next experiment was to use a different texture instead of splintered wood, so I reached for my stack of digital photopolymer texture sheets and tried one of those. I used the same technique as before and the same half biscuit backing concept. It looked promising, and  after a bit of painting and distressing etc it looked really interesting. So I reckon there is quite a lot of scope for polymer clay experimentation here. . . 

Textured and treated surface

Talking of which, I had another idea and tried cutting the half biscuit in half again across the width, which gave me another nice couple of shapes which could be more of a manageable size for earring charms maybe. 

I tried another of my texture sheets, a simple, bold one this time, combined it lightly with the splintered wood texture on top of it, and then, after baking,  kind of wiped the two pieces gently across a blue stazon ink pad. I was pleased with how they came out too. I'll definitely try some more of those. . . And get a couple of different colour ink pads.

Half biscuits - textured and coloured

This post has been a bit long so I will keep the rest of this missive brief. . .

We found a pair of stone pelicans at our local antiques street fair at the weekend. They fit in nicely with our front door area and add a bit of eccentricity, not to mention a slightly gothic vibe too. Fun. They can keep a careful eye on any visitors ;-)

Stone pelicans in place above the door

As for the interesting new glue. The adhesive I was using to attach bits of moulding and dado rail to the fake panelling was new to me. It's a kind of two part epoxy stuff, but part one is a spray. You spray one surface, let it evaporate, then apply glue to the other surface, when pressed together they form a very strong, superglue type bond in about ten seconds. Brilliant. It may have polymer clay and jewellery uses. Not sure yet but I will keep it in mind.

Well, until next time,

Jon x