Art, craft a little bit of everything all rolled into one. Software developer with an aptitude for fixing things by improvising with leftover household objects. I love tea, puzzle games, tea, making things, sunshiney days, tea and tea. When I'm not making things I'm off in other worlds playing videogames, solving puzzles, drinking tea and watching TV. I don't like raw tomatoes.
I love making things, Collect up the pieces, and meld them into something else. Something amazing. Or functional. Or pretty. The internet is a wealth of information shared by others who've gone before you. You want one; google it, build one. It's more fun than going to a store.
Right now I love the weather.
I like the plants but they don't like me.
I don't mind, it's too sunny to stay inside.
When I first moved in I bought some super-cheap plain wine glasses in the local Wilko. I take good care of my stuff and don’t have people over often (ever?) so 10 years later they’ve all survived. It’d be nice to have come pretty ones but I can’t justify throwing out something that’s perfectly good that I don’t use very often, so I decided to decorate them myself (and hey, if it all goes wrong they were only cheap).
I bought a bottle of Pebeo Vitrea 160 in 07 Amaranthine purple. But this stuff needs to go in the oven to cure it so I’ve been putting this project off for years, and now I’ve finally gotten around to it I’ve decided I wanted the colour to match some other stuff in my kitchen instead. I picked off a nice blue on the colour chart in Artycat and… well
One of these things is not like the other…
The one on the right is ’64 – Shimmer Turquoise’ I think, and it’s a terrible dingy green-grey colour on glass but great on other stuff that isn’t see through. I also think it’s been discontinued, so maybe that’s why. I didn’t have the reciept so one manufacturer labelling fault and a second purchase later, I got the correct Turquoise colour.
Testing the colours on a pasta sauce jar out the recycling bin I kinda liked them both, so I decided to go with it.
The brush stroke pattern on the top blue one was an accident; it is possible to use this paint without getting any streaks at all, but after I did this I thought it looked kinda cool so I decided to re-do the others to match. And then spent the next hour trying to re-create the mistake I’d made, without quite as much success but it’s close enough.
Definitely the weirdest thing that’s ever been in my oven
They’re supposed to be dishwasher safe but I probably won’t chance it. Though after seeing the mess other people’s dishwashers make of glassware I normally handwash them anyway.
After successfully using a black Sharpie on some Crystal Clear Shrinkles shrink plastic I picked up a few more to try adding some colour.
Sharpie don’t label their pens (helpful!), so the colour names are a guess based off what one website said was in this pack. I guess the names don’t really matter as long as I can tell them apart, so I’ve made up some numbers and written them on.
I have this habit of picking up a few seashells evey time I go to the beach. I say I won’t, but then I inevitably end up spotting one or two. I’m very good at only picking up one or two but, well, I’ve been to the beach a lot so…
I got the idea to put them in box frames from Pinterest somewhere. These are some 15cm deep frames I got in Hobbycraft.
I think the idea is you’re supposed to stand them up on their side so all the shells fall to the bottom but, well, I only pick up shells I think look cool so I want to see them all! The frames are lying flat on the bottom shelf of a clear glass coffee table. Dad reckons I should just make a coffee table with the shells under the top. Would probably need a load more years to collect enough shells for that one, so perhaps not.
Some of my shells are too big to fit, still haven’t figured out where to put those ones.
A project I’m working on has a section made of clear stained glass. I can’t find any in the right size and shape so I’m experimenting with some alternative materials to find something suitable. This time; Translucent Polymer clay.
None of the samples were see-through when rolled to the width of a cocktail stick.
From left to right: Fimo Translucent white, Fimo Translucent Blue with some soft Pacific Blue mixed in, Fimo Translucent Blue and a stained glass mosaic tile
Rolled thinner, they show some partial translucency. The best was the blue translucent clay (lower left); when I tried mixing a different colour in to change the tone a bit it lost the translucency (upper left).
Lower left is a stained glass mosaic tile; this by far looks the best but it’s the wrong shape for this project, and it’s too thick. Sigh. (they also got lost in the post for 3 weeks so this was a suprise last-minute addition to a test of what it *should* look like).
A project I’m woking on needs a piece of see-through stained glass. I can’t find a bit in the right size and shape so I’m experimenting with using shrink plastic.
-1- The easiest way to find out how big something has to be drawn to come out at the right size after shrinking is to make a ruler as a size test, with lines drawn 1cm and 1 inch apart. I’m using Crystal Clear Shrinkles and mine comes out with a scale factor of 2.66.
-2 and 3- Sharpies: pretty easy to get even, comes out kinda dark but good transparency when held up to the light (see image below).
-4, 5, 7, 9, 10- Windsor and Newton Promarkers: according to the internet these should work but I found them to be not great at this. Perhaps the colours I picked were too light, butI found I just kept getting a puddle of the clear alcohol solvent building up on top of the plastic and very little of the colour. The best result I got was using 3 separate layers drawn in a different direction, letting it dry between each, but Sharpies work much better.
-8- Crayola: these work well, you have to use sandpaper / wet and dry paper to roughen the surface first (or use the pre frosted stuff). It’s not really see-through when you’re done so it’s not the look I’m going for in this project but nice to see how they’ll come out for other stuff.
