Drawing

Hi all,
I hope you had a very merry Christmas. We are still waiting for a house moving date so ours was a bit flat. Living without the internet is starting to irritate me something chronic. I am doing this post from a hot spot while I am balancing the laptop on my steering wheel so it won't be a long one.

I have just done a drawing for the top of a pencil box that I am doing for my wife. I intend to use my scroll saw to make the box from a piece of American cherry and  use a mixture of inlay clay work and pyrography to fill in the design.

Hopefully, I will have in done in the next couple of days and if I can hunt out a hot spot I will show you the finished article. My wife has also taken up the pyrography iron again because she has packed all her paints and clays a little prematurely. Anyway, I should also be able to show you what she's been up to in my next post.

If you don't hear from me before, have a cracking new year; I might even crack open a tin of cider myself and welcome the new year with open arms.

Christmas

Hi all,
Sorry that my post have almost dried up but we are still waiting to move house. We cancelled our internet supplier on the 4th of December at our current address because the solicitors said we'd be moving on the 6th. They lied.

Well that turned out to be a load of rubbish and now it looks like mid January. The only good news on the horizon is that we decided to have BT for our new supplier and that is set up in the new house so when we get there all will be well. Going with BT also means that we can connect via some of their wi-fi hot spots and that is how I'm managing this post today.

However, it is very hit and miss because the hot spots seem to move or the signal drops out. We have system now where my wife sits in the passenger seat looking for hot spots with her kindle fire and when we find one I stop and log on with our old lap top. It is very slow and very frustrating but it's better than nothing. Having no proper internet connection is almost as bad as having a leg off.

I hope to get back to doing a bit of pyrography in the new year and hopefully will get my posts back to normal. 2013 was,'t a good year for me, so I'm hoping the next one will be better.

Whatever you are doing this Christmas, I hope you have a good one.

Hare Bells

Hi all,
Sorry it's been a while since I made a post but our house move is now a nightmare. Everything is a disaster because the solicitors and estate agents are a bunch of, well I won't say what until we are in our new abode. That is if it ever happens. We have had two moving dates that never happened and we are now waiting for the third. The phone line and Internet have been cancelled and our mail is being redirected. We still do not have a moving date and our solicitor can't even be bothered to ring us back.

Ah well, it'll soon be Christmas and if I'm lucky I'll get a turkey sandwich.

Needless to say, I haven't been doing much in the way of craft work. I did managed to do a small trinket pot pictured below with a small flower inlay.

I didn't make the box, I bought it. However, I am responsible for the hare bells on the lid. I drew the design onto a piece of paper and stuck it onto the lid with some temporary adhesive glue. I then used my scroll saw to cut out the pattern with a number 3 blade.

A lot of care was required on the pattern to make sure I didn't ruin it. Care was also required because when working on the lid the blade was very close to my fingers. One slip and my violin playing days would be over.

Once the pattern was cut out, I cut a small disc of plywood which I struck on the underside of the lid. The purpose of this was to stop the clay inlay from going straight through.

For the inlay, I mixed some blue and yellow clay for the stems and leaves and used two tones of blue for the actual hare bell flowers. The most tedious part was filling the design with the clay. I used the blade of a craft knife to make sure each part of the design was fully filled. Once that was done, I cooked the lid in the oven then gave it a coat of sanding sealer followed by a couple of coats of varnish.

This is only the third inlay I have done and I'm very happy with the results. I am desperate to get this house move out of the way so that I can combine scroll saw work, inlaying and pyrography in an artistic way. My head is full of ideas but I have decommissioned my scroll saw and other stuff is packed away in boxes.

Perhaps the new year will a change of circumstance and I can get stuck in again.