Category: Miscellaneous

left over egg ideas, artwork, and other things

Lauretta Louise Milner Turner May 18 1918 – July 25 2018

Actually that title should read, “my mom and dad”….. i don’t really separate them into two beings, rather think of them as a pair. Dad has been gone for 3 decades.

Mom was nothing short of “unique” in all ways. I honor her willingness and ability to care and nurture her children, parents, and others who entered her life.  One can say, too, that she did so with an interesting approach.

Here are two links, one to the graveside service and the other to the church service. Both are long, many people had lots to say but the theme was always the same–she never abandoned anyone, even those who took advantage of her. Her values were traditional and her approach often barbed. She taught us integrity.

And my sweet grandaughter Corin has given me a great memory of that service (which she attended)…. an angel zombie with one eye….a picture which was drawn for the occasion (along with a few other zombies)… she was almost 7 at the time. I added the stars on the flight back to Cincinnati, then vectorized it. Mom would have loved it. I think my mom was an angel for many.

Easter eggs: 2018 – metal cross and euphorbia milii cane

This egg was made for a friend who has been a wonderful training coach for running the Flying pig marathon.  Last saturday was the 20 mile run (day be fore easter this year – April 1).  The metal filigree brass colored cross was purchased at michaels, which I bent and shaped to fit an egg.  The euphorbia milii flower (two red petals and a yellow center) is called the christ plant and it carries a whopping number of ugly large thorns… actually an amazing number of thorns. It does grow in the middle east and perhaps (legend says) was the plant plaited into a crown of thorns. All i now is that whomever made that crown also got seriously injured.

These photos are not that great,  but you can see the metal cross and the flower cane on the back… and the light yellow cane behind the cross had fluorescent yellow powder kneaded into it (btw the powder makes the clay a little less fun to work with…. it feels like baking soda had been added to prevent sticking… LOL) bit after just a few hours in the kitchen window… it did fluoresce in the dark.

 

Valentine egg: candy ropes and floral stamps and polymer clay

Valentine egg: candy ropes and floral stamps and polymer clay — this was such a fun egg to make and not that difficult. I began with an empty chicken egg and several twisted ropes of two contrasting colors of polymer clay. I dabbed on a little liquid sculpey to keep a couple of the heart outlines in place  then cured the egg.  I added more heart shapes and cured again, after all the stripey places were on i cut out sheets of polymer clay that fit the hearts, and stamped them with a old floral stamp i found lying around. then fit those cut outs into the hearts, tucking the edges down beside the cured two color ropes. After curing again, i punched out the inbetween egg shell and dissolved out the rest of the egg shell using vinegar (it took many hours and two changes of vinegar). I used triple thick clear and a little bit of black acrylic paints to “antique” the stamped areas.

To me it looks like candy…

Stamped floral polymer clay egg

This egg was made by covering an entire egg (don’t forget to poke the hole in the bottom to let the hot air out during curing) with a very thin layer of translucent polymer clay and cured the egg.  The purpose of this was to give the egg shell some stability so that when i pressed the stamp onto the next layer of polymer clay (a pretty thick layer of translucent polymer clay) it would not crush the egg shell. steam punk polymer clay impression egg

I did this second layer near my stove-top and oven to keep the clay pretty warm (so it was/is winter, and the house is barely 62 degrees, not conducive to conditioning clay) so that when i used a stamp (one found in a collection of rubber stamps) to impress the floral pattern on all sides it would make a deep impression. It was important NOT to cure the egg a second time before totally finishing the stamping and impressing the lines which might have become blurred  (this has to be pretty obvious).  I actually rolled it smooth a couple of times before i figured out how to handle the egg so as not to flatten out the embossing on the opposite side.  Egg was cured, cooled, sanded just a little bit, and a gloss medium mixed with various colors of acrylic paint just dobbed on the surface to highlight the impressions.  It was a fun technique to try, I think maybe at some point i will try it again.

It looks a little like steam-punk.  Ha ha, if i had used a metallic paint and black and grey it might have looked like metal.  That would be kind of fun, and one could use nuts and bolts and screws and washers and lock washers and gears and hex wrenches and screwdrivers etc etc to make the impression of common metal objects

 

Gingerbread and candy house 2013

These structures were pretty monumental, sometimes more than 2 feet tall. I loved doing these with the kids, miss it so much. I still have a blank candy castle form in my basement, waiting for a time when we can cover it with the containers of candy and cereal (well outdated, maybe 4 years outdated… LOL) that still are in my cupboard.  They were not perfect, but what the kids put, stayed, everyone did their own thing.

large gingerbread cookie candy house