Soul Arts

Another Year

 Another birthday rolled by this week... like christmas they seem to come around quicker all the time wheras as I child birthdays took FOREVER to come around... had a lovely time out with the daughter, got some lovely pressies from the family and a handmade card from a close friend... even scored flowers from the nephew!  Thats a first LOL (guess it makes up for the friends who forgot vbg)

Friday was another 3FL+1  day, Glenda, Lucy and Eliza bound their books and I worked on binding the one I am making for my sister.  Yummy lunch and coffee supplied by Eliza, good company and a lovely day day all round!

Another FL +1 project put to bed

Been laid up all week with a killer cold (thanks sis NOT LOL)... and finally started to feel a bit better Friday, so just after lunch I got out in the studio, fired up the heater, hit the lights and got stuck into my FL project that had been languishing for weeks.

Its made from bookboard frames that I bought from Jen Crossley at A Mark In Time, I covered one side in scrapbook paper (7 Gypsies, 'Gypsy Market') and the other side I covered with pages out of an old Womans Home Journal circa 1930 and pages from The Argus circa 1909 (yes I really cut up a 100 yr old newspaper).

The pages with the cut out name plates I printed the subjects name and their dates (e.g. 1918-2000) have just blacked it out here for privacy sake.

Added lots of family pics (not the orginals this time lol) and bound it all with fabric, tapestry, doilies etc., Had a great time making it and am looking forward to next year when Judy Wilkenfeld teaches at CSR 2010.. will hopefully learn a lot more.....

and yes.. I have cleaned the studio!

Finished!

I've finished my book!!  Now to get some lunch then come back and clean up this mess!  

Nest Watch

Mama is still on the nest.. though we have a fatality... one egg smashed to bits on the concrete below :-(

  Dont know the how or why of it... but hopefully the last remaining egg makes it....

Feathered Friends

Have mama bird sitting on the nest now... everytime I went in and out my studio door she would take off and sit on the roof till it was quiet again...

The last couple of days she seems to be getting used to it and stays there longer.. managed to get a few shots of her today.. admittedly from about ten feet away with the zoom lens lol

Not terrribly exciting that its just a pigeon, but nice to have the nest there anyway... once she vacates it this year I plan to collect it.... sure I can find some use for a single owner nest LOL

Spring Has Sprung

Very soggily I may add, we are now 28 days into spring and have had a freezing cold week of heavy rain, strong winds and hail.  Our coldest AFL Grand Final ever.. normally playing in lovley sunshine by now, it was bitterly cold (not that this matters much in the scheme of football to me, cant stand the game!).

But in the midst of all this a pair of birds have been building a nest in the old Fuschia tree outside my studio door... this morning I noticed two white eggs in there.. how cool!  I can see the tree from my studio window, so am keeping my fingers crossed the I will be able to get some pics of the chicks when they hatch.... 

Etching

Last week while Barb was visiting the 3FL+1 got together (which gave us 4FL vbg).... 

Lucy and I had dabbled with etching before when we visited Jen Crossley and armed with Stephanie Lee's book Semi Precious Salvage we got together for a day of etching.  I scored a large sheet of brass from work so we used that.. it was 1mm thick, fine for our purposes, but too thick to bend.  

We stamped with stazon, immersed them in a bath of Ferric Chloride (and from the colour of my hands, they were immersed often too LOL).  We left them a couple of hours while we moved onto other and had a lovely lunch with home made scones by Barb... then rinsed them off and dunked them in Liver of Sulpher...revolting smelling thing that just added more colour to my hands... I wish I had taken a pic of my hands.. they took a couple of days to return to 'normal' colour.. looked like I had jaundiced hands with black patina under the fingernails... I could have used them in my spooky book! LOL  

As the L of S didnt turn the etching as dark as we wanted we then resorted to my black patina and all was good...we sanded them back with a bit of wet and dry sandpaper to bring the etching back up brighter, tried to re-sort who had what (note to self: next time mark the back of each piece so we know who did what!)

The pitched room one I plan to drill a hole in and make into a necklace... the larger rectanglar one will be the front cover of my spooky album...

We plan to have another go.. and work through Stepahnie's book cover to cover.. but thats after we finish our frame books we are working on....