Happy Halloween

Yesterday at work we had a pumpkin carving contest which inspired me to play around with this year's pumpkin. I had read about sculpting pumpkins with a dremel tool so I thought I would do that. Here's where we're outlining the pumpkin with a dremel tool. We thought we would try to do the fancy type of pumpkin where there isn't an actual hole through the pumpkin but that the pumpkin was carved in relief.

Dremel tools don't work well for the untalented on the larger portions to be carved out.





Chiseling went well at first, but every time we tried to see what it would look like with the light inside, we realized that we needed it to be thinner and that it was going to take forever. We were already more than an hour into carving the pumpkin at this point. So it was decision time, do we persist in trying to make it a shaded pumpkin or just say screw it and just go for the traditional cut out type of pumpkin.




We got out the jigsaw at this point and carved right through the pumpkin for the larger areas. Then refined with knives and clay kit carving tools. Here's what it looked like finished in regular lighting.




And here's what it looks like lit up. We're happy with it but will likely stick to simple faces for next year.

A pair of earrings...

Hi Everyone,

I've been playing around a bit with the dichro slide paper. Here are a pair of earrings that I made yesterday. First I crackled some black clay with red foil (which changes colour a bit when a heat gun is applied), then pressed into one of Bev's stamps that isn't publicly available yet. Set it into some silver bracelet links that I bought at Walmart and filled with liquid clay.

Cut out a small piece of the warm colour block pattern dichro slide paper. Put it on the earring after a few layers of liquid clay, and then filled with more liquid clay.

Presto, earrings.

I like them.

I'm not sure how I feel about the dichro slide paper. I have a couple of other pairs of earrings that I've made that I'll post later.

Cheers,

Sandy

Trinkets from my father...

Hi Everyone,

My father and his girlfriend were up to visit us for a week. Dad decided to clean out some of his old hobby stuff and I was fortunate to inherit his trinkets. He started to get into wire-wrapping a few years ago and decided that it was too fiddly for him, but not until he had gathered some supplies.

I confess to not having a clue as to what the top photo is - he seems to think it might be a set of polishing compounds. I think I might agree. I haven't gone searching the Internet yet to figure it out so if anyone wants to volunteer some advice, I'd be more than keen to hear about it.

He also gave me his tools - they'll come in handy. I don't know quite what the bottom two do, but he gave me some wire-wrapping books that might have some instructions on them as well. Again, feel free to volunteer what they're for. I can figure out the rest.


This last photo is of the stones that he brought up. I'll use the cabochons in tins and embellish with clay somehow. Maybe make some brooches out of them.

It was a good visit. We ate way too much. But it's always nice to have him at our house. I get a lot of my personality from him and I consider myself very fortunate that he's been such a big part of my life. He was the Cool Dad among my friends when I was a teenager. We live several thousand kms apart, so I don't get to see him more than once or twice a year.


This last photo is one of him with his relatively new goatee. I confess to finding very few men attractive with goatees. There's a character on Stargate, Ba'al, that I like with a goatee, and my friend, Nick, that I wrote about earlier, looks OK with one, but other than that, I can't think of too many men that can carry them off. So when Dad mentioned that he was growing a goatee, I groaned. But, surprisingly, I think it suits him very well.

Thanks for the trinkets, Dad, they'll certainly be put to good use.

Cheers,

Sandy

Killarney Provincial Park

Hi Everyone,

I haven't been claying the last couple of weeks because I was getting ready for a canoe trip. My husband and I finally decided to go to Killarney Provincial Park. It's about a six hour drive from home and we've never been.
It's famous in Ontario for its beauty, particularly in the fall.

The one thing I was dreading was a 3 km portage which we were going to do twice. I carry 65 lbs on my back which is most of the typical camping gear (sleeping bags, tent, clothes, sleeping pads, first aid kits, etc). My husband carries the canoe and the food. It was as hard as I was expecting and it was a long two hours each way but it's nice to know that I can do it.

The park is beautiful and I can see going back. But I'd double check the forecast before making any plans again for the fall. We had over 35 mm of rain one day which manifested in thunderstorms, high winds and even hail. Fortunately we weren't on the water that day, but only because of the weather.

Overall, not a great trip due to weather and other minor misfortunes such as equipment failure, but not a bad trip either.

I'm sure my husband will be posting more photos and more description on his blog so here are just a few of my favourites.



Cheers,

Sandy