Sunday's spotlight - "Oh I do like to be beside the seaside"

By guest blogger Pete

On Friday of this week - and for you, dear reader, LAST Friday - I am due to take the annual school leavers service for the pupils at St Peter at Gowts School. These leavers will not be finishing their education then but moving on from Primary School to the "Bigggggggg school". We have a lot of Eastern European children at St Peter's and this makes communication quite difficult at times, both with the pupils and also with their parents. Children do pick up English but whilst doing so there is a real danger of them falling behind in other subjects. St Peter's School serves a more deprived area of Lincoln and many of the pupils receive free school lunches and also free breakfasts. But before the move to the big school there is a 6 week summer holiday and no free meals available to any pupil.


As a youngster I lived in Southampton and each school holiday, my mother and I took the long trek from there up to northern Yorkshire to spend this holiday with my brother and his wife in the small market town of Stokesley.
Me and my brother Bill

Now Stokesley had - and still HAS - very little to offer anyone of any age. As a boy I can remember a dark little cinema - rather a flea pit - that showed old films about twice a week, Middlesbrough was about 12 miles away and occasionally there were visits to Ayresome Park to see Middlesbrough Football Club and its star players Wilf Mannion, Geoff Hardstaff (or it could be Hardcastle!) and their Italian goalkeeper, who rejoiced in the unusual name of Ugolini. More frequently, my brother - 15 years older than me - took me to see the Middlesbrough Speedway team in action.

Gradually I acquired "summer friends" at Stokesley and, when we'd saved sufficient pocket money, we'd beg a packed lunch and catch the bus to the seaside. Redcar and Saltburn were to two choices of destination we could head for.

Redcar was a rather run down resort - maybe it still is but I haven't been there for decades so can't say - and not our favourite. It could best be described as "Kiss me quick" hats and candy floss. I remember once going there with the family and my brother's mother-in-law expressed a before hidden delight in paying to be a passenger on a 20 minute rowing boat (quite large "rowing boat") ride from the shore and back again. Fortunately we didn't have to row for this was done by four or more burly fishermen. But then the final demand came out - the weather had to be bad and the water rough. It was both that day and, in my innocence, I was the only one in the group who said I'd go with her. I ended up having to travel the 1 hour bus journey back to Stokesley dripping wet. My cheerful mother told me that she wouldn't be at all surprised if the bus driver refused to take me, Take about Job's wife!!!!!!!


Saltburn was more upmarket. The town stands at the top of a tall cliff and so hasn't interfered with the sandy beach down below. It's a lovely beach there and, despite the fact that it was 1 1/2 hours by bus from Stokesley and therefore more expensive to get to, it was our favourite. Here we could play games and indulge in other beach activities, find an ice cream (if we were rich enough) and, providing we got the times of the tide right, could walk along the beach to nearby Marske and then back along the cliff top to Saltburn.


Despite all this, it was good to get back to Southampton, even if that meant a return to the drudgery of school.
Bill

Keep taking the sea air - if nothing else it helps the hair to grow.

Birdhouse necklaces

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, when I was making the birdhouse earrings, the first pair I made were quite large - too big and heavy for earrings - so I decided to carry on with them and make them into necklaces.


They have the same design as the earrings - one round house with a shingle roof and one square house.

Hmmmm. Guess I need to come up with names for them that aren't just "birdhouse".... Hmmm. How about "home tweet home"? Corny, I know :-D

Etsy Treasury

Barbe from Soulyours/Njia Studios put together a lovely looking treasury on Etsy today, entitled "electric metal". All the pieces are made by one of the Etsy Metal Clay team. She was kind enough to feature my "feed the birds" necklace. Here's the treasury. Thanks Barbe.

Commissions - III

Someone on Etsy just asked me to make a couple of pieces for them, similar to ones that I have done before.

The first was some birdhouse earrings. I just finished them today. They turned out larger than the last pair I made. Wish I'd made myself a pair at the same time!


Two different styles of birdhouses - one is a rectangular house with sloping roof and the second one is a round house with shingle roof. Wonder which one the birds would prefer? Each has a little perch by the door to ease your way in.... I've often wondered how birds can fly straight into birdhouses and not just hit their head on the back of the house.....No headaches for my birds - they get to land first, and then go inside :=D


As I was making them, I first made them too large - so I'm also doing necklaces with the large version! Show those soon.

Hope you like the earrings...... Which one would you go in first?

Commissions - II

The second piece I made for Elizabeth for one of her wedding party is like an amalgamation of a couple of pieces I've made before. She liked the idea of a lariat style necklace - like "anyone can fall in love" but decided she would like a cat with the heart instead of "anyone" as the recipient is a cat lover.

So here is Elizabeth's second piece:

If I was naming it, it would probably be something like "my heart belongs to my cat".....

Again, I've put the date of the wedding on the bottom.

I'll show you some more commissions as and when I finish them - but it could be a while yet as one of my dear friends is getting married this weekend. Festivities run from Friday lunch all the way through to Sunday brunch. We are hosting the wedding brunch on the Sunday at our home. I made her some necklaces for the wedding party too - so after this weekend, I'll show you those.

Seems like the blog has gone from sequel posts of "collaborations" to now one about "commissions" .....I wonder what will come next????? "c....."???

Birdcage necklace featured on "The Clothing Menu"

Kristin from "the clothing menu" blog, featured my birdcage necklace in her blog. Her blog features clothes and accesories from independent designers.


She did a post on "the birdcage" and here's my little necklace.

Thanks for including it Kristin. Love that first tee-shirt!

Commissions - I

I am doing quite a few commissions right now - in fact, I have 10 on at the moment.

I'm doing a couple for the daughter of a friend. The daughter is getting married on the 1st August. They both came round to my studio a couple of weeks ago and looked at what pieces I had, then came up with two ideas.

Here's the first one:


You may well recognise the design as I have done another bunch of grapes like this a long time ago - but then it was smaller. Elizabeth saw those and asked that I make a larger version as her friend wears large pieces! So it's a biiiiiiig bunch of grapes! They are 6cm long from stalk to bottom - but as it hangs from an angle, it isn't quite that long.

It seemed pretty large when I'd done it - but when you hold it up, it works well, as the holes for the grapes don't make it bulky. I like it - think it works well at this size.

The wedding is here in Sonoma County - aka wine country - so I think it will be appropriate. I also "wrote" the date of the wedding on the back of the piece.

Seems so different from my style nowadays..........

Bronze bird

I spent a little time last week working with bronze and copper clays together. It wasn't really very successful but I did get one little bird out of it so thought I'd show him to you.


This is one my standard birds in bronze and then I inlaid copper for the wings and eyes.



I like the contrast between the two metals and for something like this - it adds a nice definition to the bird. What do you think?

Birdie's Bathtime at Birdland

When I wrote my post "Bathtime at Birdland" last month, I knew there would be a follow up! Taking those photos of all the birds in our birdbath made me want to create a birdbath piece of my own.


I decided to try another version of a ring with a birdbath on top. Instead of forming a rectangular band like I did on my duck in a box ring, I used thick silver wire for the band and put the bird bath on top.


It was different for me to make a bird with his wings outstretched - but then I love to see them do that in the bath! Get that water under the wings! The water is created using resin which I colored.


What a happy little bird in his bath! What do you think? He's not for sale. He's a tester to see how the ring holds up. Obviously it isn't an every day ring that you would wear when you do the gardening etc - more a "cocktail ring" as they are now called. I do like that phrase! So I will be wearing him for a few cocktail hours and more and see how the band part holds up. It is my plan to try a few different band styles and see which looks good but also functions well. Rings take quite a bit of abuse - even if only during cocktail hour!!! Cheers!

Sunday's spotlight - It was hot!

By guest blogger Pete.

Well, to be more precise, "It was sweltering!" The week before our holiday to Suffolk the weather was great. Based on our experiences of how weather locally can quickly change we began to wonder whether or not we had chosen the wrong week for our East Anglian Expedition. Would we be snowed in or would the floods sweep away the cottage we had rented - and us? Would we see Lincoln again if we ventured out to our proposed destination? Well, the week we chose turned out to be absolutely sweltering. It was too hot to eat much but at least the local trade in cold drinks did well. The day we got home the weather broke and, on top of that, an hour after we got home a water pipe burst and we hadn't turned the water off whilst we were away. I think we were rather lucky there!!!!!!!!

One of our reasons for choosing Suffolk as the destination for our holiday was that it has a large portion of "Constable Country" within its borders. For those readers from other shores, Constable ranks high in the list of English artists. He was a Suffolk man and many of his paintings were set in that area around southern Suffolk and northern Essex. That area remains pretty well undisturbed by modern development, although some of the old houses have been taken over and converted into rather expensive and not always particularly good restaurants.


We started off our visit by calling into East Berghof - Constable's birthplace. In actual fact the house in which he was born has long gone but the church in which he worshipped remains unchanged except for the introduction of electricity. It appears that Constable's forefathers had difficult building a bell tower for their peal of bells. Perhaps the bells were too large and heavy - the present ones looked it - and the tower fell down . The decided on a temporary solution to this disaster and it was a temporary solution still in existence today. They built what I would describe as an open sided low barn and put the bells in that. The building is still in use, the bells still rung on a Sunday and the bell tower absolutely useless but rather decorative. I'll enclose a photo to show you what I mean.



Flatford Mill is the sight of a number of Constable's landscape paintings. Ignoring the not too many commercial signs, the area is pretty much as Constable would have known it. The house featured in, what is probably his most famous painting, "The Haywain" is still there and now privately owned. The River Stow at this point is much deeper that it appears in the painting and would suggest that only artistic license would allow a horse and cart to cross at the point it is doing in the painting.

The last place we visited had the unfortunate name of Dedham. Housed in the church here is one of only three non landscapes painted by Constable. This original Constable is on loan to the church and, although displayed above human reach, it is easy to see.


If you like ice cream and go to Dedham then walk down the road opposite the church. Just a little way down and you'll find a place that sells the largest ice cream cone I've ever come across and all for £1.40. If nothing else, one of those ice creams makes Dedham well worth visiting.

Keep on eating the ice cream - its wonderful stuff to be addicted to.

Collaborations - part 5

Yeah! We had a great day today. Lots of fun silver time and wine time and friend time and sharing time. And during all that we managed to finish our collaboration pieces too.

Drum roll .....rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Here are the finished pieces - each started by either myself, Angie or Marly, then passed on..and then passed on again....

And of course - part of the process was the naming....so here is each piece described individually......

The piece Marly started, we named "Myriad". It illustrates the myriad of different friends we have in our lives and how different they can all be - yet all join as a single entity in our life.


Angie's piece we named "Trilogy" as it made us think of each of us three and the different life stories they have, but also how they all intersect.



And my piece we named "Anyone can be progressive". We felt the process of collaborating by starting a piece then handing it on was a bit like a progressive dinner where you have appetizer at one person's house, then move to someone else's home for the entree, then have dessert at someone else's. And as "anyone" was involved, it just had to be "anyone can be progressive". And of course - a little double entendre with progressive indicating moving forward, improving, change.....



We reflected on how it felt to start a piece and then pass it on..... it involved a stage of letting go - letting it become what it would and not necessarily what we had in mind...and also a level of trust in each other.

We then had to decide who was going to keep and wear each piece. We decided to number each piece then write the numbers on a piece of paper and throw them down. The piece that landed nearest to each of us, was the one we chose. Strangely enough - we each got the piece we started !!!! But in the end, we each kept a different one and agreed that next time we meet up again, we'll exchange and "progress" to the next piece. So I am now wearing Marly's "Myriad", Angie is wearing "Anyone can be progressive" and Marly is wearing "Trilogy" .

But now the day is over and they've gone.... and it feels sad....but at least I have my momento in "Myriad" - a reminder of the boundless and infinite friendships we have and share.....

So do let us know what you think of our collaborations..........

Collaborations - part 4

Marly and Angie are coming over in about an hour so we can finish off our collaboration pieces.

They are fired but now need polishing and patina and....

So here are the pieces before they went in the kiln.


First in this picture is Marly's collage which I got second and then Angie finished. Marly then add a bail to the top. Second in this picture is Angie's reversible lentil showing the side that Marly finished and then how Angie put the two halves together. (The next photo will show the reverse and what I did to it!). And third piece in this photo is "Anyone" which I started, Angie impailed (!) and Marly made a heart and moon to hang on his wand. They will be assembled after firing.


This picture shows the same pieces again but the other side of Angie's lentil with the little flower that I made.

Hopefully I'll post the final pieces later today.

Collaborations - part 3

Here are the next phases of our collaborations. If you want to look back at how this started - scroll down to Wednesday's blog post.

Here's Marly's collage with a couple of additions my me:


Here's my "anyone" which Angie impailed with a wand in his hands (and tummy!) and a squiggle on his hat and then a loop through his head! Yes, she is cruel!


And here is Angie's split lentil (sounds like a soup!) which Marly chose to decorate one half of. Marly often uses three circles in her designs - and it seems highly appropriate as there were three of us doing our collaboration!

Angie and Marly are coming round tomorrow so we can finish our fired pieces - so look out for tomorrow's blog post to see our progress!

Collaborations - part 2

Following on from yesterday's "collaboration" post, here are some photos of the stage one of our pieces.

This first piece was started by Marly:

It's a collage piece so she made the base and then added on some different textures and then passed it on to me.

I started a piece making "anyone" so he could be added to:

I then passed him on to Angie for the next stage.

Angie started a lentil bead with leaf texture on it - here it is in two parts that were joined at the end:

She passed it on to Marly.

Tomorrow I'll show the next phase so you can see what the second person in the phase contributed! See you then.