In The Studio

A Touch of Steam

In The Studio

In a plan that makes sense somewhere in our brains but no where on paper, the one room in the house we have a crystal clear vision for is not the first room we’re planning to renovate. In fact, I don’t even think it’s in the top 3. Mostly it’s because the room in question is our dining room and, after scoring that great dining set, pretty much works as it is while other rooms are crying out for help.

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Still, when the November challenge for Gauche Alchemy was unveiled, my mind went straight to our traditional dining decor meets steampunk awesomeness plan and created a pair of copper-gilded sconces that will wait patiently for the rest of the room to catch up!

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To see how everything came together, make sure to check out my post over on Gauche Alchemy today. And then, if you want to make your own set, read below for what you need.

Parts & Supplies list for 2 Sconces

  • 2 wooden plaques
  • Paint (barn red and burnt sienna, in this case) and metallic glaze
  • Brushes and sea sponge
  • Chipboard gear shapes and pencil to trace patterns
  • Water-based adhesive & brush
  • Copper leaf & dry, soft brush
  • Glass varnish
  • Power drill with spade bits
  • 2 chandelier-based bulbs
  • 2 chandelier-style lamp housings
  • Copper pipe and pipe cutter
  • Copper pipe fitting (2 male adapters, 2 street-elbow joints, 2 45-degree elbow joints, 2 reducer adapters and 2 reducer bushings to nest inside the adapters–sizes will depend on your lamp housings, ours were 1/2″ for the pipe and the joints, etc. that fit)
  • Silicone adhesive for attaching pipe components

It helps if you have some basic electrical know-how–I left those bits up to Todd since he’s better at it than I am. One thing you do want to be extra careful about with a project like this is not to let any exposed wires from the lamp housing come into contact with the copper pipes and fittings. That would be bad. That’s also, Todd tells me, the reason we used 2 45-degree joints instead of a single 90-degree elbow, to put less potential strain on the wires.

While it’s a shame the sconces will have to wait to be hung (we plan to hard-wire them into a dimmer switch when we update the room) it’s nice to have something tangible to guide our choices as we find fixtures for the room over time. A lot of designers zero-in on a key fabric or pattern. I guess this in our key piece!

Helmar Share: Veterans Day Shadowbox

In The Studio

I’ve got my second project up over at the Helmar blog today getting creative with another one of their fabulous adhesives. This time around I’m highlighting ZapDots: 3D Double-Sided Adhesives that come in different sizes as well as in black, white, and clear. I took one look at the black ZapDots and knew they’d be just perfect for creating shadowboxes!

Some behind-the-scenes shots of the shadowbox process.

Some behind-the-scenes shots of the shadowbox process.

This shadowbox is in honor of my friend, Lyssa’s, military service. With Veterans Day/Remembrance Day just next week, it’s a quick project you can put together to honor a current or former service member. Click over to see how it came together: Shadow Box of Service

Faces of Phases

In The Studio

This month’s inspiration board from Gauche Alchemy? Pure lunacy!

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In the best possible sense, of course.

I never thought the window between our dining room and our hallway would come in so handy!

I never thought the window between our dining room and our hallway would come in so handy!

We’re all moony this month and I thought it was the perfect excuse to make another piece of Halloween holiday decor for the Dollhouse. You can see the full details of these moons over at the Gauche Alchemy blog, today, and here’s the way they look hanging in our upstairs windows.

3 of our 5 moons, the easiest ones to spot from the street.

3 of our 5 moons, the easiest ones to spot from the street.

Alas, the hope of the glow in the dark paint has been somewhat thwarted by one unrealized factor: the lack of dark. There’s a streetlight across from our home and it’s on–as you would expect–at night. Thus, our windows are seldom dark enough to really let the glow show. But the moons still look pretty awesome, even at night, so I’m counting it as a win.

Having the new space to decorate this year has really made getting ready for Halloween that much more fun. While some of my bigger ideas won’t happen this year, and we need a few more decorations to really round out the decorations, it’s a pretty cool “problem” to have.

I Made the Team! The Helmar Team!

In The Studio

Yes, the tiny hint I dropped a few weeks ago about some big new for me that I can finally share is that I made the Helmar Design Team. So, for the next 6 months (or maybe longer), you’ll be seeing more projects showcasing their fabulous adhesives around here.

I was first introduced to Helmar after getting involved with the girls over at Gauche Alchemy–some of my fellow Alchemists were on the team, then, and later we did a swap between the two teams. You may recall my decorated wine bottle using Helmar Liquid Scrap Dots and Quick Dry 450?

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The grape clusters and vines on this bottle are made of Helmar adhesives.

My first project is on the Design Team blog today, and it’s worth checking out if you want to see how I used Liquid Scrap Dots (seriously, one of my favorite adhesives) to create the Halloween ribbon wrapping around my banister.

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And here’s a behind-the-scenes look at the making of this project. Please excuse the messiness of the Abyss, I’m still working on getting it set up, but having the space to stretch out like this is one of the big pluses to moving into the Dollhouse!

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Gotta love the space!

In Front and Behind and Somewhere In Between

In The Studio

So, did you hear the news? Gauche Alchemy has decided to continue their blogging even while the shop is on hiatus by running challenges each month and I’m happy as a clam to remain part of the Alchemists who get to work on those challenges as well! Of course anyone can participate in the challenges and there’s even a link-up for submitting your own take on the month’s inspiration with a prize: this month is a punchinella pack! You have until the 31st to come up with something, so still plenty of time.

This first month’s inspiration was Frida Kahlo–what a way to start, right?!

I’ve long admired her as a human being and as an artist and have read a spectacular biography of her that went so much deeper than the Salma Hayek movie ever could (though it was pretty faithful in many ways). Despite the various physical infirmaties that tried to cage her in, she stood out in life and art in a way that definitely leaves an impression. It was that presence that really inspired my project this month and took me somewhere I’m not usually all that comfortable:

In front of the camera.

Head over to Gauche Alchemy to see the rest of the pictures.

Head over to Gauche Alchemy to see the rest of the pictures.

I started by creating a floral crown, like the flowers she often wore in her hair, but it grew from there, encompassing wrist and ankle. Now, I ramble on quite a bit about the meaning behind the piece and the thoughts it stirred up in me over on the Gauche Alchemy blog and I encourage you to read about it there, and keep in mind that I wrote it all up back before the end of July. Had I written it this week, I don’t think my feelings would have changed, but the passing of Robin Williams a few days ago just reinforces what I’ve come to believe about the balance of creative gifts and our mental and/or physical health.

This month’s inspiration spurred those deep thoughts while also taking me far out of my comfort zone. In order to even attempt for my shackles to make sense, I had to wear them, to show them in place, and to embody the best I could the spirit of our inspiration. And if I was wearing them, that meant I would need help to get the images needed for the post. Thankfully (as I always am in his case), Todd was willing to help me rearrange our guest room to make a photo space and then have me coach him through the photos I needed. It is my hope that the pictures come off more as an homage to Frida Kahlo and not a mockery, if intention counts for anything…

F for Frida...

F for Frida…

I’ve been spending a good amount of time the last few weeks more focused on what I want to be creating–both in art and in life. It’s made me look harder at the current time limitations I’m under and the steps I need to take in order to alleviate those constraints. Simple put: time to work my ass off to build my personal career so I can make the time for everything else. There’s a shift in my priorities going on, now, and I hope I can keep up!

If you follow me on Twitter you may have already seen the patterns I’ve been creating as part of the Make It In Design summer school. I’ve been enjoying the challenge of the creative briefs the classes have given and have taken some steps–again–outside my comfort zone and been rewarded for it! Here’s the first set of briefs (I signed up for the beginner, intermediate, and advanced tracks) I completed, I’m still noodling over the second set but I’m excited to play with animal print and tribal-inspired designs.

For the beginner brief I went with a whimsical scatter design...

For the beginner brief I went with a whimsical scatter design…

But for the advanced brief I used some of the same images without their outlines and a painted background to create an entirely different mood.

But for the advanced brief I used some of the same images without their outlines and a painted background to create an entirely different mood.

The intermediate brief was a bit odd-theme-out from the other two, with a different palette and a call for a more geometric style to work well on swimwear.

The intermediate brief was a bit odd-theme-out from the other two, with a different palette and a call for a more geometric style to work well on swimwear.

I’ve also entered Lilla Roger’s Global Talent Search and have already turned in my round 1 assignment (I’ll share it once the entry galleries have been made public later this month). Not gonna lie: I want to be one of the 50 picked to proceed to round 2 like you wouldn’t believe. But even if that doesn’t happen (there are a LOT of people in the competition from what I understand, something like 5,000?!) I’m happy with the work I turned in and plan to do more with it on my own.

Which means I’ve been spending the rest of my time this week working on my portfolio. My current portfolio is not only sorely in need of updated project images, it also needs to be reconfigured to allow for an art licensing section so those patterns and the collections I create around them have a better chance of being picked up by buyers!

I’ve got a fire lit under me–what’s keeping your engine’s stoked as we hurtle towards fall?