Fundraising Art Auction

Regular readers will know that I am doing a degree in Applied Arts; what you might not realise is that I am in my final year now.  I know, its come round really fast, hasn't it?

So we final year students are holding an auction next week, to raise money to take our work to the New Designers show in London next June.  Lots of generous local applied artists are donating work and we students will be putting pieces in too.

You are all invited... there will be mulled wine and mince pies and the perfect opportunity to buy some really unique Christmas presents.

More upcycled bottles

I am getting to grips with cutting the tops off larger bottles to make them into vases... a good thing too as I have quite a collection of lovely bottles now waiting for me to do something with them.

After a lot of research (and ruling out buying my own brick cutting machine!) I decided that running a small diamond wheel at a slowish speed on my Dremel was the way to go.  The glass needs to be kept wet so of course I get wet too; I've invested in a proper safety visor to keep the wet ground glass spray away from my face.  And at the moment I do the cutting outside!

As you can see on the left, the initial cut is jagged and not very safe so I then spend some time polishing the edge smooth.  The one on the right is nearly done...


Next step will be to mask off my design and get sandblasting.

And in the best Blue Peter tradition, here's one I made earlier, now available in my Etsy shop.

The Island

Beautiful weather and a low tide combined made it an ideal day today to walk out to Hilbre Island. Just a few of the photos I took...

Looking across to Wales

The old lifeboat station (and rainbow)

and slipway.

Looking back to the mainland.

So many mussel shells... they reminded me of Ai Weiwei's sunflower seed installation.

An Upcycling Dilemma

There is a problem with using recycled materials to create with.  And the problem is, it is absolutely missing the point to go and buy something new just because you want to recycle the packaging, or in my case, the bottle.

My lovely husband braved the sidelong looks and smuggled an empty 330ml Ty-Nant water bottle out of a restaurant for me a while back, and since then it has been sitting on the shelf looking so lovely and blue, waiting for me to do something with it.  This week, I did.

The bottle is interesting because it is not, as I expected it to be, blue glass, but clear glass with with a blue enamel coating.  Which means that, with a lot of patience, I could sandblast the blue away altogether to get a two-tone effect (I have to admit I stopped where I did because I ran out of patience, but I think it's enough!).  And the result is just so much better than I thought it could be.

I do have several of the larger 750ml size bottles which have been collected for me waiting to be played with; they appear to be blue right through; we shall see.  I'd love to have more of these little ones to work with but at the moment I am resisting popping over to Wales just to stock up... buying such small bottles of sparkling water really is a bit of an extravagance... isn't it?

New Flower Loom Kits

After receiving many requests, I've been selling kits to make flowers like mine for a while.  I had the looms made especially for me but my stock was beginning to run low and I wasn't sure I could get any more.

Up steps Mike from Wudwerx.  Mike usually makes great bee hotels like these

but he said he would have a go at making some flower looms for me.  And not very much later he had produced these, perfect!

So now my flower loom kits are back in stock on Etsy and on Folksy and Mike assures me he will be happy to make more looms when I run out - thanks Mike!

The kits contain everything you need to make 3 ribbon flowers and make a great gift for someone crafty.  But be warned, flower making is addictive!