Work in progress!....

After yesterdays  laser cutting session I now have a kitchen table full of acrylic shapes to weave together with wire and rubber. I finished late into last night just picking the protective layer off the shapes with a needle, so my fingers are abit sore today.
Heres some more work in progress:

Because the pieces are woven together they twist really well creating different ways to wear the piece.

Scuse the sellotape!

Hanging by threads!

Another twist

Glue!!!

I've had lots of problems with the micro nuts & bolts that connect parts of my jewelley and the fact that they keep coming apart. Todays experiment was using plumbers tape, worked but the end of the screw is white! Not a good look. Superglue in a pot, using a cocktail stick as a dropper. Looked awful... Think I've now solved the problem with model makers cement, but its really smelly and solvent based.

Super glue on the left, looks really awful, plumbers tape on the bottom right and top right magic cement!

Work in progress, had to take this apart quite a few times....slowly getting there!

Weaving with fluro acrylic rods, expensive though!

Another pic of two rows of acrylic weaving

It bends nicely, but I'm not sure of the breakage point as yet

Pinterest...

I've recently joined Pinterest, an online virtual pinboard. Its great for creating moodboards for projects. Although I think I'm now addicted! Having spent many, many hours online!
Heres a few images I've collected for my final project at Norwich University College of the Arts. The original sources can be found on pinterest.

Iris van Herpen

Una Burke

Kate Moss

Sarah Moon

Roses!

After five days of cooking the petals I pulverised them with a blender. Drained the water from the pulp overnight and was left with a mushy mess. Smells rather nice though. Next step, coating kebab sticks in melted beeswax and forming the beads. Not sure if it will work yet! They look like a cross between kebabs and the eggs our dogs leave in the backyard!
Try another experiment later....

Straining off the water from the petal pulp

Not sure this will work yet....

Pressie from Hubbie...

My lovely hubbie Andy brought me a muntjac deer skeleton as inspiration for my latest work. He found it whilst walking our two hounds Wooluf & Greebo. I think they might have liked it for their tea! Naughty Dawgs! Inspiration for my latest work comes from Giger, Dr Gunther van Hagen, ( programme on channel 4 recently about his work, 'The crucifixion')http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9190588/Crucifixion-Channel-4-review.html There was an amazing church in Prague featured in the programme, made entirely from human bones. It was rather macabre but also very beautiful. Hubbie thought it'd be such a shame to leave this wonderful skeleton on the roadside, he really does understand my strange taste in beauty.

Makes me think of Giger

I decided to bury this beautiful creature, the earth will strip all the bones clean in about six months or so.

Everythings coming up roses

Last year I did a lot of textile work based on heat-pressed flowers, digital photography of deconstructed antique textiles to produce a series of digital printed fabrics. Some of which were shown at Premier Vision in Paris this year.
I came across this Elizabethan recipe for making rosary beads from rose petals. So I thought I'd give it a go. I plan to make some beads based on Japanese fastenings for armour for the costume idea I'm planning for my degree show.

Good old Tesco's! Left over Mothers Day Flowers bought for 50p

Close up

I love the way they are decaying

Lots of hand-picking

Add water to the pan

The recipe says to simmer for one hour everyday for five days.

Happy Easter! 43 Days before deadline!!!!!

Well, its 43 days left before the hand-in for our final major project at NUCA! Loads to do, so its a matter of prioritising what works, what doesn't and refining the work that I think has potential!

lasercut ply wood shapes waiting for a good wash, each one has to be cleaned by hand and then dried.

Experiments with the wood/gesso/lace/lasercut shapes, two had a layer of soft gel gloss and various staining with boot polish, my days as a furniture restorer came in handy here!

laser cut disks in various shades of staining

Lasercut/wood/gesso/transfer printed shapes waiting for a wash. After laser cutting the edges of the wood burns and has to be cleaned off by hand.

Drying out on the top of the vintage cooker!

Washed and dried and first coat of soft gel gloss.

Large lasercut circles, wood/gesso/lace/tea stained. These had to be recut by hand as the laser didn't cut all the way through, holes had to be re-punched and sanded by hand. A lot of work!

First layer of soft gel gloss.

Heat Experiments

Put together a couple of ideas for cuffs today, lots of fiddly work with the micro nuts & bolts. Fired up the vintage 1930s gas cooker, which has one temperature setting...on!
Ten minutes was far too hot, and melted the mirror acrylic. Also I need to make a cast of my wrist as trying to bend melted plastic and hot metal around a bandaged wrist (for heat protection) was mighty stupid!

Black & engraved mirror acrylic cuff

Another view

You can see from this that 10 minutes has melted the mirror acrylic.

Back to the drawing board, not sure if i'll use these as yet.

5 minutes in the oven!

Still having probelms with the nuts unscrewing themselves, I've tried screwlock also a kind of superglue.

Lasercut cold porcelain which I made myself, laser cut whilst still mouldable and bandged around a bottle.

another view of the cuff

The inside which was a heat transfer design

needs alot more work, but do I concentrate on other pieces

Nuts & Bolts!

The homemade lightbox is certainly getting used lately! Heres some recent pics of work in progress.....

Experiment with lasercut acrylic discs, the blue ones are mirror acrylic that has been engraved by laser. I then tried joining them with micro screws. I then went onto using heat to bend the acrylic to make a cuff, still needs more development in terms of bending/heating and joining.

This is my homage to Keith Albarn and the temple shrine of Abdullah Ansari in Gazargah, Afganistan.

Inspiration from this piece came from historical ruffs, sci-fi films like Giger's 'Alien,' Alexander McQueen and Sarah Angold. This is weaving with wire and acrylic, two rows.

Two rows of acrylic and wire, I'm liking how it twists like a spine.

More twisting!

Twisted!

Three rows of weaving!

Four rows of acrylic, lots of wire and nuts and bolts, work in progress.

Inspiration for Ba8, Keith Albarn, Ansari Shrine in Afganistan, my daughter, fragmentation, patterns, sacred geometry, drawings of Leon Bakst, blue and white pottery, globalisation, appropriation...... just a few things to be going on with....