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As early readers of my blog know, I really enjoy playing with how various frames change our perceptions of objects.  Just placing something on a pedestal makes itseem special.  With this one, I wanted to have a more fantasy/faerie feel to it, so worked with rounder, softer shapes.  I drooped and bent some of the major elements as well.  Instead of the warring states  Chinese feeling some of my other pieces have, this one walks a different line. More cake decoration than bronze.

I finished it up by sewing a small, velvet pillow and glued on an acrylic dome from a gumball machine prize. I stepped outside my typical hand worked ‘elemental style’ to match my idea, and ended up liking the actual piece.  A main reason why I enjoy making things is the surprises that come as the idea becomes real.

I’ve been doing a bit of drawing lately, and we have this big box of crayons,  so I got to thinking about crayons for adults.  What might that look like? What if they were less ‘corporate’?

Luckily, we had a whole lot of broken crayon bits, so I soldered up a couple of metal molds, got some advice from a couple of DIY websites, stunk up the kitchen and almost ruined a perfectly good cookie sheet.  Still, lots of fun for the whole family!

I took inspiration from various stone and ‘primitive’ tool shapes, along with simple surface decoration. My biggest improvement, besides being able to do rainbows in alternative scales, is adding a hole, because…

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Just in time for the hot days in August, I finished up two solar ovens.  The fun oven is in the shape of a flower and will bake a single cookie…

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