Step Twenty-One: Copper clouds

Dearest Sylwi,


Well, here we are again! :-)))) The weeks fly by so fast, sometimes it feels like I've just managed to relax from the last Tuesday's escapades, when I have to start all over again!


This week turned out a bit like last week for me. More exploring, rather than creating. Which is what makes it so hard to post. I feel like I'm posting half of an idea... and no idea what the next half would be... but, I enjoyed doing it, so I should try not to worry about the end result! I guess the process and what I learned is all that matters! :-)


This week I bought Papercraft, by R. Klanten. I think it's a brilliant book! It covers many of my favourite paper artists and introduced me to a few that I'd never heard of. I'm fascinated by all of the different techniques the artists use. It inspired me this week to play around with paper myself.


I began by cutting 6 circles of paper, placing them in a pile and then stitching them together through the centre. It made a sort of paper pom-pom. I thought I might make a few and string them together on a garland... then, I thought, hey! I wonder what that looks like in copper mesh (as you do)! :-)

Not that you can tell from the pic, but actually, I thought it looked / worked really well! :-) 


I'd also heard that copper goes a beautiful rainbow effect colour when you heat it. So, I heated the edges of the mesh over the flame of my gas cooker... and it sorrrrt of went a pretty rainbow colour... but the very edge also went a dull grey - like, I'd maybe overcooked it. :-) Anyway - I'm learning all the time here! A little bit of heat and you get some great colours (you can sort of see them in the pic above - it's really hard to take a pic of).


It's been raining hard here today, so, I decided to make a rain cloud and raindrops out of copper... using this 'pompom' technique above. Initially, I was going to make lots of different sized, little pompoms and hang them all together, to make the cloud shape... and then string raindrops made from copper sheet (and heat them, to make them pretty rainbow colours). That was the plan, but it didn't get that far! 


I ran out of the copper mesh, so will have to try the idea another time. I thought today, though, that I could try it with paper, as a test, to see if it worked or not. 


Instead of making clouds from lots of little pompoms, I thought I'd use the same technique of stacking the shapes and sewing them together through the centre, but instead of lots of circles, I cut cloud shapes.

The idea worked well with paper. I had enough copper sheet left to make raindrops, so I strung them onto my cloud. They looked pretty just as the copper colour, but I decided to go one better ...and in doing so, went one worse! :-)  ... by heating them. For some reason, when I heated them, they didn't colour at all, but just went a burnt, black colour! :-(  *sigh*


I tried to sand the black off, but the raindrops still look horribly dull. Next time, I shall have to remember to heat the metal, before I cut it into shapes. I have no idea why it didn't work - maybe the drops are too small to be able to use that technique and it only works on larger sheets of metal? Anyway. In the pic below, you can see the one raindrop that I cut from a sheet of metal that I heated (before I cut it into a drop) on the right... and the others which I cut first and then heated. Big difference! :-)

I quite like how this type of paper sculpture worked - either as 'full' clouds, hanging from inside a box... or 'half' clouds, stuck onto paper. Very versatile technique.


I wish I had more time to explore everything I learned today (and more copper to play with!) :-) ... but I don't. ha ha! :-)


And that, Dear Sylwi, is my Step 21! :-) Very bizarre, I know. I couldn't possibly have guessed that this is what I would 'create' today when I woke up! :-)


Hope you and the kids are feeling better?


Lots of love
Fi
xx


It's not really cheating if I add this on the same day, is it?! ;-) It's my wedding anniversary today, so I made this up really quickly this evening for my husband.

It's inspired by the fabulous Oded Ezer and his 'I ♥ Milton poster'.  Except his is so cool! :-) Mine's very crude and messy! I totally made life hard for myself by trying to do the heart the way I did the clouds earlier... and it only took about 15 minutes... but I'm excited. Nurturing creativity through this blog is spilling into other areas of my life. :-)


Right, I'm really going this time! No more late additions! :-)


xx

Step Twenty: Creating with a short attention span - copper, pinholes, paper cutting, butterflies, a bit of everything really! :-)

Dearest Sylwi,


This week, I sort of went with the flow and this is what resulted! :-) I wish I could tell you the reasons, but I don't know what they are! It's just what I felt like creating today.

I always thought that canvases looked better in threes, but today, I liked just the two of them together, mirroring each other. I tried this pattern in a couple of other mediums - sewing onto paper and with material, but these were my favourites. I'm surprised to find that I haven't taken to sewing very much. I thought I would love it, but really, it seems to be paper that I enjoy most (at the moment!) :-)

The first sheet is copper with pin holes and the second, is pieces of cut out paper. I really liked the strong effect that 'drawing' with cut paper gives... I may try some more of this in future. It almost felt like I'd found a style I could work on and develop... I imagine quite strong illustrations, bold colours, but instead of using paint, cutting paper. Maybe, if I worked on it, this could become my 'style'?!! ha ha! :-) Who knows?!

Anyway, my mind wandered (10 minute attention span) :-) whilst I was piercing the copper. I'd tried (without success) to cut a butterfly from copper before, but it's too hard to cut tiny details into the metal. So, I tried it today with the pinhole technique. By piercing the copper with a pin, I was able to give the butterfly some interest.

In this pic, it's perched on a copper can which has been left outside. Originally, the can would have been the same colour as the butterfly currently is, so I'm curious to see what colours the butterfly will go, if I leave it here. Assuming the dogs don't thieve it and break it first! I found my birdie seed marker in pieces on the floor - luckily, the copper part survived, but the twig had been chewed up! :-) 

I like how it looks when you hold it up to the sky. Here it is, stuck to my office window... 

(Darn the sky, no good for photos today - yesterday it was azure blue and today it's tupperware grey! ha ha!) :-)

xx

Step Eighteen: Kusudama, Part Two... and a voyage of discovery with copper!

Dearest Sylwi


Today was going to be Part Two of the Kusudama project... and a variation of it, that I wanted to explore. The variation didn't turn out quite as I expected (at all as I expected, in fact! ha ha!), but I'll tell you about that in a minute - first, the Kusudama! :-)


Once I had created twelve flowers (see Part One from last week), I glued six together to make one half of the ball and the other six, to make the other half. To make a string to hang it by, I glued some raffia in a loop through the centre with a little bead just as decoration...

and... finally, it's finished! :-)

{It's a lot smaller than I thought it would be, but very dinky and cute! I can see a few of these in a larger size, hung above a wedding, or party table as decoration...}


It feels extremely odd to finish it, as it's been on my creative 'to do' list for about 2 years. When I first found the tutorial, I made one flower and that has been perched on top of my inspiration board for those 2 years, looking pretty... but ultimately, a daily reminder that the project remained unfinished! :-)


As I was folding the paper last week, I really started to get excited about the possibilities for it, if it was made out of metal! I envisioned it as a sort of sculptural piece for the garden, or as a light fixture (if the metal had lots of holes in it, I figured it might look beautiful and also cast some stunning shadows).


I've never worked with metal before, so did a bit of Googling and came across The Crazy Wire Company in the UK. They sell small packs of mixed offcuts of metal - perfect to test out my ideas, without committing to buying huge amounts of expensive materials... and then finding out my ideas wouldn't work! :-)


So I ordered a couple of packs of mixed offcuts and was thrilled when they arrived. The pieces were about A5 / A6, or smaller - lots of different thicknesses and some of them were made of a very fine and beautiful mesh. Perfect for messing around with. 

I tried to fold a Kusudama petal with some thin sheet copper, but it didn't work. There's a fold in origami where you fold the paper one way, which gives you a guideline and then you reverse the fold. It didn't work at all with the metal... so, I put the idea aside for the day! I may come back to it in a later Step, though! :-)


I'm doing a lot of planting in the garden at the moment and desperately need seed and plant labels, so I can remember what I've sowed and where. I searched online for some pretty markers to buy and could only find these beautiful, silver cutlery markers, created by a few sellers, my favourite being, 'Monkeys Always Look', over on Etsy. Alternatively, there's a tutorial on the 'Shrimp Salad Circus' blog, if you wish to create them yourself! 


Whilst I think they're gorgeous, it did strike me that the copper scraps I had would be ideal for markers. Not only is the copper a beautiful colour right now, but as it oxidises outside, it will turn an even more attractive range of colours. So, I decided to experiment!


I've had a bit of an obsession with tattoos over the last few years and originally had thought of doing tattoo scroll-like plant markers... I made a scroll seed marker and stamped the word 'coriander' onto it ... but there was something bugging me about the idea. 


Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I wondered if maybe I'd seen this idea done by someone before... and then it suddenly hit me! I had!!! In the lovely, 'Something Else Perhaps' shop on Etsy! Although, her results and the quality of work are far more beautiful than mine. Check out this baby! :-)


The copper scroll idea must have been embedded in my subconscious... which made me laugh, but was also kind of annoying, because I thought I'd come up with a great idea... but clearly I was just copycat-ing the gorgeous Dana! :-)


So, I changed tack and created leaves from the copper instead. I thought they would work quite well, as when the copper oxidises it will turn a lovely, green, leafy colour. I used a script font and embossed the herb names onto the leaves (I used a permanent marker to make them more visible) and then attached them onto twigs from the garden.

I also created a little song bird for the mint... hopefully, he'll scare the slugs away! :-)

So, I created two things for this Tuesday! :-) Which makes me laugh, because I know there have been days when I struggled to create one! :-) It also makes me laugh that I thought I would have a copper Kusudama light fixture, but instead, have seed markers! :-)


Hope all's well with you. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with for your next step, dear Sylwi. I wonder if, with these steps, we are moving any closer towards actually meeting in person one day?! :-)


Take care.


xx