my new esty shop

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If you’ve read my last blog (or two) you already know I’ve been busy setting up an Esty shop. Its been interesting….

For instance, it took me days to set the shop up, then hours to list the first items. I hope I’ll get better at this as time goes by. My aim is to write descriptions that are interesting and fun to read, not just a boring list of materials and measurements.

Something that shows the character of the piece I’m listing, and the character of the people who made it.

Its hard to make things to sell. I’ve never been good at it. I’ve always made things for myself, for my home or for friends.

I’m the type of person who would rather give something away than sell it. I’ve built up enough good karma in my life to not come back as a bug in my next life.

But reality is that karma doesn’t put food in the horse feeders, so I have to be practical and actually exchange items for money most of the time.

(Not all the time! That takes the fun out of it!)

I would love to keep all the stuff I make. I love making things out of discarded bits and pieces.

I love every piece of junk I use to make something. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have risked tetanus and broken nails going through boxes of rusty screws in junk shops.

So, when I make something, its made from a collection of items I’ve hand picked cause they spoke to me.

I have acute hearing, and perhaps an ear-brain translation problem, but when I’m rifling through a drawer of rusty nuts and broken hardware, I’ll hear a little voice saying ‘Me! Take me!’ and I’ll look and find an interesting hook or a rusty hinge with my name on it.

Speaking of my name on it… The other day I was at a tip shop and I saw something that spoke to me. It was most likely the bottom of an old cupboard. It had a drawer in it, cracks in the side and no top. Most people would see junk.

To me it glowed in a white light, an aura of potential emmanating from it like smog.

I got the guy to put my name on it so I could go back and get it later in the day.

I have plans for that bit of rubbish. Mud room or porch, new top, coat of paint and some glue on the cracks…

I’m gonna need a bigger boat…

There is only so much room in this house. And its already got too much stuff in it as it is.

Something has to give. Things that don’t fit or don’t suit have to go.

Thus the shop.

So please visit the shop and have a look. Its pretty sparse right now but I’ll be adding things as often as I can till I have a respectable inventory in there.

Perhaps I’ll even learn how to use Etsy properly!

glitter, sparkle and rust

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Ever since I saw this photo on Pinterest I’ve been hanging out to make something similar.
I had to find the ‘hanger’ for it, then I had to find the right stuff to hang off it. The photo on Pinterest didn’t lead to any kind of blog with more photos so I was on my own.
I had a couple of these old timber hand sanders (you staple sandpaper to them and use them like a belt sander only without the benefit of electricity, just elbow grease.
I hadn’t decided what to make out of the sanders, but I did think they’d make a good hanger for the ‘dangle’.
Really, what would you call it? Its not a suncatcher. The crystals do catch the sun, but the rust doesn’t… Its not a wind chime, it doesn’t chime at all. It might thunk and clunk but musical it ain’t.
One of the small hardware stores I liked to visit now and then was closing down so I bought a few meters of silver chain. I’d never seen this type of chain before – I’d seen chunkier chains or those horrible toilet chains, but never this type.
I did find it in another hardware store the week after buying mine, it was in a packet not by the meter, and it was called ‘watch-makers’ chain.
Or something like that. It had something to do with watches anyway…
I looked through my boxes in my workshop and picked out items I wanted to hang on my ‘dangle’.
I had a beautiful sugar spoon. Some springs. Some rusty washers. Some crystals.
An old house number. Some barbed wire Wayne had made into pendants of sorts (if you don’t mind being spiked by your jewelry).
An old bolt. A little pie tin or metal cupcake pan. A broken watch. Some keys. Some beads. A rusty coat hanger I found in the paddock which I bent into a heart.
I put eye hooks onto the bottom of the sander. I cut the chain into varying lengths and used pliers to open links to join it to the eyes and to the objects. Some objects I used large jump rings I’d taken off some cheap necklaces.
I’ve hung it on the deck from the hook I put up last weekend to photograph the suncatchers.
Eventually I’ll move it to the other side of the deck to catch the morning sun. For now I love seeing it when I come home.
Old and new. Silver and rust. A mix of glitter, sparkle and rust.
I’ve started collecting more objects to make another one for my etsy shop.
I spent hours the other day opening an Etsy shop and listing items. Took me about 4 hours to list 3 items. I better get better at this!
z

curly wirly wire

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When I was out feeding the horses the other day I came across what I thought was some rusty wire. 
Being the ‘never let a rusty thing get away’ kind of person I am, I picked it up and took it into the house where I promptly tried to make something with it – and discovered it was copper!
So I gave it to Wayne. He loves copper wire.
Left to his own devices, with a bit of wire, some pliers and a warped mind, he make this crazy curly bendy thing out of it. Lovely, but it was just a crazy curly bendy bit of wire.
I took one look at it and handed him a little bottle from the collection of old bottles I dug out of my back yard in Fentonbury when I first moved in there. This one looks like it might have held ink in it originally, but then again, who knows. It could have been a tiny bottle of gin for all I know.
I asked Wayne to attach his crazy curly bendy wire to the bottle to make it into a sort of vase with a crazy curly bendy wire attachment. 
I added a few crystals for a bit of bling, and voila!
Another gorgeous object with no apparent use but very pretty to look at.
I was thinking you could put a tiny bunch of flowers in the bottle. Or a single larger flower.
Seeing as its winter here and the frosts have all but killed all my plants, I didn’t have any flowers to put into it for the photos.
So what I did was hang it from the hook on the porch and take photos of it against the sky.
I think its gorgeous! I love the randomness of it, the pink tone of the wire and the pinkish crystals.
Wayne has so much free expression in his work. I’m so much more controlled and restrained in everything I do. I wish I had his freedom.
Though not when it expresses itself in his cooking. The slow cooked stew he made where he added red wine and yogurt will go down in history as the ugliest meal in the history of culinary failures. It was bright purple.
A lesson was learned: Free is good in some places. Not others.
 I’ve had to work hard freeing up my painting. For years I’ve tried to loosen up when I paint. 
My work is very descriptive and realistic. I long for the freedom of the impressionists who described things in such a way that left so much more to the imagination. They painted light as it bounced off their subjects instead of the subjects themselves.
I think my fascination with white on white in my own paintings is partly due to my wanting to free myself up and paint light. 
Of course, part of it is that I paint white poodles cause I own white poodles….
But I love white on white. If I didn’t share my home with 4 dogs and Wayne, I’d be redecorating in shades of white. As it is, the salmon carpet is already taking a battering!
When I applied to art school the main focus of my portfolio was etchings of eggs. Simple white shapes. It was all about the play of light and shadow. And painting white poodles, especially those in show coats, is all about that too.

Once again I’ve strayed off topic. I’m working on being freer with the things I do. And working with Wayne on projects like this bottle/vase/crazy curly wire thing is so much fun!

z


cocktail {forks} anyone?

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I just love this one!
When Wayne knocked down the old stable in the back paddock, he re-used as much of the wood as he could to rebuild the stable. The unsuitable bits were piled into a heap to be burned.
At least that was the plan. You know how it is, time goes by, things get put off… The pile is still there. Partly cause its either too dry (fire restrictions) or too wet, or perhaps its cause I won’t allow Wayne to burn it.
That pile has a ton of interesting old bits of wood in it! 
A few weeks ago I went out and brought about 10 large pieces of wood in, to the casita, to dry out so I can make stuff with it.
Wayne saw me sneaking in with the wheelbarrow and I swear, he sounded just like Homer Simpson.
“Oh No! I knew I should have burned it! Don’t take it all inside!”
Not all of it! Just a bit at a time!
Anyway, I’ve had this box of cocktail forks for years. Never used them, just had them cause they’d come in handy one day… 
I had a chunk of wood I liked and wanted to put hooks on it for keys. I didn’t have enough matching hooks so I started thinking what I could use.
Viola! Cocktail forks. A bit of bending and you have key hooks!
I mixed up some flat white paint with some blue artists paint, a bit of black and a bit of unsanded grout to create a colour I liked. I brushed it onto the wood without worrying about full coverage. I wanted the old wood to show.
When the paint was dry I drilled holes into the bottom of the block, filled them with liquid nails and glued the forks in.
I then drew the keys on with pencil and painted them using black artist acrylic.
I drilled holes in the top and used wire as a hanger, hung it on the wall and had a look. Hm. Something was missing… I went and got the two barbed wire hearts Wayne had made and added them to the top.
Much better!
A different colour wall would have been good, but this was the only spot I could use given its too dark to photograph outside! 
z

incredibly hard to photograph

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Have you ever tried to photograph a suncatcher? Let me tell you, its not easy. You have to find a background which allows the crystals or beads to show up, allows you to see detail, the right light to show off the sparkle… plus they have to be hanging up.

I tried photographing them flat in the lightbox. Nope. They just don’t look right lying flat. I tried photographing them against one of our timber walls, that was too distracting.

Finally, I climbed up onto a chair, put a nail in the deck frame and hung a hook from it.

I now have somewhere to hang stuff to photograph. I hung the suncatcher there. It worked better than the previous options. The sky and trees on the distant hill are a nice backdrop.

So here is the first of the suncatchers.

This suncatcher was made by Wayne, he bent the wires to make the intricate shapes. I then added the glass beads to make it sparkle. These are wire wrapped beads, all in different colours.

Wayne really is good with wire and metal. I did a little wire work today and punched a small hole in my finger. Fun.

The photos really don’t do it justice but they’re better than my previous attempts!

z

retro look tins

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While ‘indulging’ myself I managed to take some photos of some stuff I finished and haven’t had a chance to share. First is this retro tin project.
A while ago I saw an image on Pinterest which I just loved.  It was a collection of tin cans with vintage evaporated milk labels on them used for storage. I just loved it.
I had tin cans. Doesn’t everyone? I searched online but couldn’t find any evaporated milk labels I could print out. I did find some jam and vegetable labels…
I resized the images in Photoshop so they would fit on the tins, cut them and used craft glue to glue them on.

They needed wire handles to hang them with, so I asked Wayne to help. I was going to make something simple but Wayne is a bit fancier than I am. He made me these handles.

I drilled the holes for him before gluing the paper onto the tins.

 
I used a strip of pine left over from my kitchen table make-over for the tins to hang off. I didn’t have any huge nail-like spikes like in the image, but I did have 5 matching hooks – though they weren’t all the same colour. I liked that. A bit more interesting.

The timber strip is fixed to the door with a screw on each end (its not meant to hold great weight so that’s enough).

The finished product is great. I’ve used it to hold my drawing supplies – pencils, water colour brushes etc.
I have been using the old door on our timber shed as my ‘hanging place’ when photographing things for the blog. Its the perfect setting – an old door with peeling paint. Gorgeous.
Not too bad I think.
I wish I had more room in our house. I’d love one of these in the kitchen to hold the smaller utensils. But there’s no room. sigh…
z

PS: These tins are now for sale in my etsy shop and they’ve been featured in 2 Treasuries so far. I’ve also entered them in the Knick of Time’s Tuesday Vintage Style Link Party. Go check it out.

lost sheep and pecking orders

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Here I am. On the morning of the first of two whole days I have to myself to do whatever I feel like doing.

And I’m sitting on the computer cause I can’t think past what I have to do. A friend of mine calls it ‘lost sheeping’… the act of being totally bewildered by the choices of things to do. (I seem to spend a lot of time lost sheeping.)

This is the kitchen table at the moment. Bits of breakfast and a collection of glass, ceramics and crystals I’m using to make garden stakes. Along with some correspondence, the netbook, and – wait – there may be some tools on there too.
 

The office is way worse. I stopped short of taking a photo of that. I mean, you’ll be understanding of some messes… but there has to be a line somewhere. This morning I found another pee spot on the carpet. Its now beyond a joke. If I walked into a house with carpet that looked like this I’d refuse coffee and have a tetanus shot.

I banished Barney from the office when I blamed him for the pee spots a few weeks ago. Last night Mischa slept in the office alone and yet there’s another pee puddle. So Mischa is now banished as well. I cannot wait to rip out these carpets and either polish the floorboards or put in vinyl. I’m so over floors that are hard to keep clean.

This is the coffee table in the living room. You’re allowed to see that. I cleaned it off last weekend but then over the week things crept back onto it. I use that table to do beading while I watch TV.

No way will you see the kitchen sink. There are 2 days worth of dishes there… We need a bigger sink. And more dishes.

Actually, I need a new kitchen with a dishwasher.

Wayne says I don’t need a new kitchen for the amount of time I spend in this one… grrr. And I already have 2 dishwashers – on the end of my arms.

That man sure does like to live close to the edge!

So, here I am. There are clothes to be washed. The kitchen to wash up and clean up. Animals to feed… all before I can even start to think of indulging myself.

Speaking of chickens (we are now!)… Yesterday afternoon (after spending a scintillating hour packing chicken frames into freezer bags for the dogs) I went up to feed the animals and found a red hen sitting on the perch acting ‘off’. I picked her up and looked her over. She had tons of broken off feathers and an area of baldness on her right thigh.

Off to Alcatraz she went.

Let me explain. We inherited a chicken coop up the back and a dog kennel. When the 5 light sussex roosters we were given to eat but couldn’t grew up, they started visiting the neighbour’s hens and digging up his vegetable patch. So Wayne built Alcatraz – a timber and wire atrocity off the side of the casita – to pen them up in. Eventually captivity turned nasty and we gave away 2 roosters to a chicken breeder, then had to separate the last two due to fighting. We kept the 2 picked on roosters cause they were the injured ones.

Yes, you can count. That was only 4 roosters accounted for. One rooster had been dispatched to the big perch in the sky by the poodles, I’m sorry to admit.

Boris No. 1 moved to Stalag 13, the ex-dog kennel. He shares his life with Clarice, one of our Isa Brown hens who was lame and picked on by the bantam rooster who has no name.

Boris No. 2 had to spend some time in a cage to get over his injuries but eventally moved into Alcatraz with 3 new black poulets the breeder gave us in exchange for the roosters.

So last night, when I picked up the injured red hen I had to put her somewhere. Stalag 13 is really too small for too many chickens so I put her into the more natural (ie not cemented) Alcatraz with Boris No. 2. I then moved 2 of the black chickens up to the old chook pen and shut them all inside so they could bond and get used to the coop.

Then I stood back and saw the bantam rooster have a go at them! So I got him out and closed in just the hens.

This morning I watched as the remaining black hen in Alcatraz pecked on the injured red hen over food. Thats it. I grabbed her and moved her out to join her sisters in the chicken coop.

Then the older hens picked on her.

Damn. I can never win. I feel like its musical chickens around here. Is it really meant to be this hard? Or do farmers just let them work it out themselves and let the feathers fly where they may?

So – to recap:

Alcatraz houses Boris No. 2 and 1 red hen. Both limping though he’s halfway to getting better.

Stalag 13 houses Boris No. 1 and Clarice, both of whom look healthy though if you watch closely, Clarice still has a slight limp.

Chookpen houses all the red hens (5 or 6, I’m sure we had more..) and the original black hen and 3 black poulets.

Plus one very pissed off bantam rooster strutting around outside the chookpen with his chest out.

And as if that wasn’t enough, there’s a wallaby eating grass at the bottom gate. In broad daylight. Another blind wallaby. And its Saturday and I refuse to go out into the quagmire that is that part of our land, mud up to my knees, to try to catch a wallaby and drive it into Hobart for the vet to (most likely) put down.

Sigh.

Times like this I long for a house in the suburbs with a tiny yard.

z

PS. Its funny how the breed of chicken really does make a huge difference… The isa browns are very friendly, easy going chooks. The black ones won’t come near us and are very skittish. The light sussex roosters are calm and lovely natured where the red and black bantam rooster is a pushy arrogant little b**&^%d.

i am being selfish

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Yep. This weekend is all MINE.
I’m not taking grooming appointments. I’m not socialising. I’m just being. I’m doing whatever I want, when I want. 
I might watch Dexter (series 6) which I just got… or I might paint. Or I might create… I don’t have to decide! I can do what I want! 
I have a couple of dogs to do on Monday morning but I won’t take any other appointments. I have an appointment of my own to get my tits squashed.
I figure I deserve to be selfish and indulge myself over the weekend since I’m going to be put through the wringer (literally) on Monday.
Being a woman sure is fun at times, huh? Once we hit puberty we have a lifetime of fun things to look forward to: 
– wearing padded surfboards in our undies
– inserting cotton plugs where no plug has been before
– stirrups… need I say more?
– cold, metal, duck bill-shaped medical instruments
– thrush
– childbirth (one I’ve managed to avoid!)
Then, as if that lot wasn’t enough, we have to get our mammary glands squashed on a regular basis.
“Tell me when it hurts”, the radiographer says.
“IT HURTS”, you gasp. And he/she squishes it just a bit more for good luck.
If you didn’t have saggy breasts before that, you surely will afterwards.
Personally, I always worry about them popping. I mean, that’s a lot of pressure. What if they explode? Like a balloon… or…  more like… a melon!
Yeech. 
Don’t think about it.
It’ll only upset you.
So… what other fun stuff have I got to share?
Romeo threw up last night. 
They all ate their food and then Romeo and Montana started playing in the living room. I knew it would end in tears, so I kept yelling at them to “stop it!” and “settle down!” but did they listen? No. They kept playing till eventually up it came.
There’s nothing quite like the sound of a dog hacking up his meal to get a person moving. Fast. I was up off that chair and running before it hit the ground.
It wasn’t too bad. It was only part of his dinner. Like I measured it, to evaluate whether I needed to re-feed him. 
I was so angry I hurled accusations at them, pointed fingers and swore as I mopped it up. Our carpet is way beyond repair…
Amazingly they settled right down. Wayne came in and they looked so guilty and chastised he could tell they were in trouble right away.
Now, that was a way better subject than mammograms, wasn’t it?
z

do i look like my dog?

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We all know how dogs and owners look like eachother, right? Well, so they SAY.

For instance, everyone thinks Winston Churchill had a british bulldog cause he looks like a british bulldog – but in fact he had a poodle!

So, its obviously not true… But there are plenty of people who look like, or have similar characteristics as their dogs.

I always thought it was bull when it came to me and my poodles. We couldn’t be more different! They’re gorgeous, graceful, elegant, sleek, slim, fit, athletic creatures.

I’m not.

They’re high maintenance with their trims. I put off getting my hair done even though I’ve found a bargain basement hairdresser who will cut my hair sitting outside her caravan.

But apparently I’ve been approaching this similarity thing the wrong way entirely.

This morning the subject of dogs and owners came up. Wayne believes its true. He said he could see it with his dogs. Barney is a doofus. Ok. He’s not the prettiest dog around, yeah, he’d accept that too. Mischa has big stomach bones… yep. And both will bowl you over for hugs and affection. (When you scratch Wayne behind his ear he’ll even kick his back leg!)

My dogs? Well… they’re creatures of their own comfort, they listen to no one, they want things their own way and they rule the place. Plus they bark at everything, even when its clearly none of their business.

Hm.

I’m not sure I’m liking where this is going…

z

kangarat has gone to a new home!

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Kangarat sold at the exhibition/competition! Apparenlty he’s gone to a good home, which is good, and I get $55 which is great!

Elmer the Emu is coming back home. He feels a bit down at the moment but apparently people did like him.

Other than that, nothing much new to report. Its been cold. Its been wet. The yard feels like a soggy sponge when you walk on it. We have muddy rivulets running through our paddocks in places. I’m sure the dam is leaking.

We desperately need a drainage expert to come and fix our problem. Know anyone willing to work for food?

Anyway, we took Ben up to a friend’s house in Westerway yesterday. We hired a float from Dumb and Dumber (yep. It was a real experience) and took it home. You should have seen Wally’s face. He was so excited. The last two times a float pulled up at our house a new playmate stepped out.

He was disappointed this time. Not only was there no new playmate, but we actually took one away!

So we loaded up Ben. He walked in beautifully. Then promptly turned around to hang his  head out the back!

I blame the others. Wally and Dancer were thumping around the paddock flat out, whinnying in distress “BEN! Come back! Don’t leave us! We didn’t mean it!”

Which only set Ben off into a lather. We were worried he’d jump out! We had to holding him back, open the ramp and jump out of the way as he lept out.

So, I ran up and shut the gate so Dancer and Wally couldn’t run down the paddock along side the driveway. I then drove the ute and float down to our gate and Wayne led Ben down, further from the pitiful crying of his paddock-mates. We walked him back in, did the gate up in record time and drove off before Ben could try anything stupid.

He travelled well and I did well too considering I’ve never towed a float before.

A few locals would disagree with that as they got stuck behind me on the narrow winding road doing 60klm per hour…

Ben is now staying with Sharon and she and her son Christian will be working with him on a daily basis. They have a brand new round yard which they made so they could work with Ben (and other horses in the future). I’m so excited.

I’ve been so wanting to start riding again. Just walking around on our own land or up the dirt road. Just enjoying the fresh air and being outside on a horse.

I’ve been so down about Wayne’s fall that I didn’t think we’d ever ride. I asked him, “Will we ever ride again?”

Wayne said, “Sure we will. Elevators. Escalators….”

Grrrr.

z