... on photographs and confessions.

Earlier this year I took it into my head that I wanted to take a photograph of my worktable that I could use as a general Kuberstore marketing-thingy-type-image, something that shows a little of both my aesthetic and my work process. I climbed up a ladder with my camera and took this:

Great. This looks like my aesthetic is 'hoarder' and my work process is 'cataclysmic'. Obviously my table in its natural state wasn't going to cut it! Once I'd sorted out the carnage I roughed out a basic composition:

Getting there, but I felt like I wanted to fill the table more, so I added in some more stuff:

Whoa. Too much. I decided to remove anything that was acting as a 'prop', leaving only the items that I would conceivably be using to work with to make my seedpod and egg wall hangings.

It was at this point that I noticed that nothing in the top right corner of any shot was in focus. Gah. My beloved Canon G7 (admittedly, some 7 years old now) was failing me. Although it does produce lovely macro shots, plainly this middle ground non-macro stuff was beyond it, at least in that top right corner:

It pained me a little to do it... but I picked up my phone, and took a test shot:

Better. In focus, at least. Focus was going to win over file size. This was more or less the composition that I wanted, too - space for text, no unexplainable items, but I needed some 'bleed' (extra bits around the edge) if I was going to use it for a postcard. Up the ladder again:

Satisfied. But not with the colour, as my eye just kept jumping to those pink moulds. In the end I went with a black and white version with a slightly warming (yellow) filter applied:

And then, because I can't help it, I photoshopped out the big crack in the table, and any other nasty mark that I didn't fancy. Here's the end result:

In the end it took 9 days, 38 photographs, lots of waiting for the optimum natural light, innumerable trips up the ladder and a disappointment in my digital camera, but I got there. 

I've just had some postcards delivered so if you'd like one I'll be at the BrisStyle Indie Market at City Hall this Saturday between 9am and 3pm - do come and say hello. Alternately drop me your address in a comment - I won't publish.

Now, as this has turned into a post about documenting a process of documenting my own work process (if you get what I mean), I'll make another photography confession. I say 'confession' because even to me it's sounding like maybe I think about this all rather a bit too much?!

*

Task: to take new photos of my plaster seedpod wall hangings, of which there are now four designs.

Thought: that I wanted a single shot of all four hangings, so that one photo in each individual Etsy shop listing shows the whole range.

Limitation: I didn't really want to make any more holes in the wall (as we're moving soon), so I would have to use my white-painted noticeboard as the background.

I set up what would probably be a perfectly adequate grouping of items, wait for the right light, take some photographs, open them in Photoshop, and then roughly chop up the composition. After moving things around into what I suspect will be an even more pleasing arrangement of items and acknowledging that my retouching skills aren't up to fixing up the joins (repairing shadows is intense),  I go back and take the photographs again. I'm mad.

'Probably a perfectly adequate grouping of items...'

'... chop up the composition.' Chop! Chop!

Sigh. Perhaps I do overthink these things, and I wish I'd ignored myself about using the noticeboard. I don't know how many pinholes I photoshopped out.

Here's the final Etsy listing pic. The greyness of the bottom left corner perplexes me a bit but it's the result of a tradeoff - natural light coming in from the right versus not letting the white plaster blow out too much against the background.

 

Okay, that's it for my photography confessions. I've revealed that I have a tendency to keep going back and trying to make things better, which results in a simple idea taking nine days to execute! GAH!

... on a mystery, solved!

Quite some time ago I wrote about finding these seedpods, which I then made a mould from and began casting. The resulting plaster versions have been featuring on one of my wall hangings ever since, but when people asked me, I had to admit that I didn't know what kind of a tree they were from.

I'd posted the question on an Australian plant forum, where it was suggested to be an immature Crow's Ash seedpod, which I thought was a possibility until I found a tree in the park and saw what the young pods looked like.

Crow's Ash (Flindersia australis) seedpods. The large open one was collected by my grandmother Mard somewhere on her travels, and the small one is an immature pod that I found beneath a tree in the Seventeen Mile Rocks park on the bank of the Brisbane River.

At the Finders Keepers market, one visitor said they looked just like bitter melon, and they do, a little... except bitter melon are green and large and the mystery seedpods were woody and small. No go.

It's funny - sometimes if you wait long enough, the answer to an old question will just... appear.

On my morning walk yesterday I took a route that I hadn't been along for some months. I was halfway up a particularly vicious hill, bordered on one side by a patch of bushland. As there was no footpath and the side of the road was gravelly and rutted, I was watching where I put my feet. Suddenly, among the spiny lantana branchlets grabbing at my socks, I saw a woody seedpod. It had opened up into three parts, but I could see that it had five lobes, and a rough exterior texture like my mystery pods. I peered up at the tree above, a towering rainforest-y type with large leaves and a smooth, mottled trunk. Could it be?

The mystery seedpod is as big as my hand... but what IS it?

Although Google had previously been no help to me, now I had some more information. I knew it was a tall rainforest tree native to Brisbane. I found a comprehensive list at Greening Australia, and started at the top. Some of the species had photographs of their fruit or seedpods, but for those that didn't I searched the scientific name in Google images. That's where I struck gold. My tree, with my pods. HURRAH! It's Queensland Maple! Flindersia brayleyana!

The interior of the Queensland Maple (Flindersia brayleyana) seedpod has the most wonderful texture - silky and papery and yet somehow woody at the same time.

I was on the right track with the Crow's Ash, even though they look like such different trees (and such different immature pods), as they both turned out to be Flindersia. I am so delighted to finally know what this is, and extra-happy that it's a Brisbane local!

Mystery solved. At last!

... on two new things.

I've been saving up the cast eggs from this one mould I made a while back, in honour of an odd little egg that one of my Ma's chooks laid. Her name is Major Hoolihan, and she got her name because she's very neat and somewhat busty-looking, like her namesake from M*A*S*H.

That's her odd little egg, alongside a regular-sized bantam hen egg. Normally she lays eggs of a decent size, so I don't know what she was thinking that day. 

Anyway, every time I've poured a batch of plaster lately I've been pouring into that one tiny mould, too, and so now I've got over 20 casts of this egg. I mixed up a batch of pale blue acrylic and painted the lot of them at once. Speckles, too. I had another chevron wall hanging in mind.

After the cacophony of colour that has been characterising these wall hangings of late, I'm pleased with the muted peacefulness of this one. With all the possibilities suggested by eggs (whether symbolic (rebirth, hopes for the future, etc) or practical (omelet, chocolate mousse, etc!), I think this would look lovely in a child's room.

Followers of Kuberstore on Facebook will have already seen these in-progress photos of a little nest I've been working on. I'm currently preparing for the next BrisStyle Indie Market in City Hall, and I was fraying the edges of a piece of linen to use as a tablecloth. Afterwards I was left with a huge handful of these wonderful stormy grey linen threads. I took a needle, threaded it up with a piece, and started working it through the handful, shaping as I went.

I was initially planning to use a single large white plaster egg with this nest, but thought I might try out a special speckled one instead. I used a few layers of watercolour paint as the base colour (which allows the nice texture of the plaster to come through, especially if I rub it back with paper towel while it's still wet) and then speckled it with white, followed by layers of satin varnish. I had to be very patient (and I'm the least patient person I know) because this is the first painted egg I've done that hasn't had a hanging loop in one end. I had to do it side-by-side and let it dry inbetween-times. Patience, Em!

So, it's finished, and is now available in my Etsy shop. This is something a bit new for me, and I'm quite liking the look, and the process. I might have to source some more linen and see what comes next!

... on learning. Always learning.

I've been taking lots of photos lately. I've made some more wall hangings out of my cast plaster seedpods, and I set one up to take some pics. It was mid-morning. There was strong but diffused light flooding in from one side of the house.

Using Photoshop, I get the seedpods themselves to look good, but even after adjusting the levels and contrast for an age, I can't get the background to become anything but mid grey without blowing out either the seedpods or the cables. I tell you, these white mobiles are a challenge to photograph. Every time I do I seem to come up against a different issue! I write up an Etsy listing for the wall hanging but these photos look way too heavy on the page.

Mid afternoon. I notice that the sun, now beaming in from the other side of the room, has lightened that white wall considerably. Pulling the white under-curtain over the glass doors acts as a big ol' diffuser and the wall is looking very promising indeed. I set to... again.

This time I'm able to get a much brighter result without anything blowing out, and it certainly makes the Etsy listing look more appealing... I think. I'm torn. I almost prefer the look of the first set, as those white seedpods really look lovely against that mid-grey. The second set is cleaner, somehow, but almost... less interesting?
I can't tell! What do you think?

... on 'things'.

I've been wondering about something lately. I've been busy helping C build our house for us. I've insulated and painted and sanded and occasionally flaked out in the heat, but it all seems very worthwhile because I'm helping to make something practical, something useful - somewhere to live!

But, as I've been insulating and painting and sanding, sometimes I've caught myself wishing that I was sitting down to finish off a batch of cast plaster letters, or making a new mould from Pinkysil, or carving a swirly ampersand, or peeling the bark off a dry branch to make a wall hanging from some speckled bird's eggs. But because I'm busy being practical, I can't quite do any of that stuff right at the moment, and so I keep on thinking. I wonder about these things that I love to make - they have no purpose other than to decorate, to be pretty. I think about my current house, and about the things that make it 'mine', and yes, it's full of ornamentation. (This usually ignites a flurry of horror about just how I'll go when it comes to combining C's and my household items when we move in together in a month or so. Will he draw the line when it comes to my mouldy old handle-less aluminium teapot that I pulled out of an old campsite, and filled with dried seaweed stems from a beach at Coff's Harbour? Eeek!) But to me, these are the things that help make my home feel like mine, and although I may possibly have a bit too much, I can't imagine having it any other way.

So, as I pour out yet more white enamel paint into the tray, my thinking continues. What is it going to be like when I move my 'things' from my old (beloved) home into this new, brand-spanking one? Will there be a place for my blue-spotted ceramic bowl full of pebbles I've collected on various trips? That little shell-and-bead wall hanging that I made one summer holiday - will there be a spot for it, and what happens to it if there's just not? What will C think as I gaily unearth old treasures from boxes (and I know I have several that will come to light when I move) and start cluttering up our house with them?

I was at Harvey Norman recently and I saw a couple buying a 'painting'. I say 'painting' because it was the sort of mass-produced thing that has been digitally printed on canvas and then someone has brushed over it with varnish to give it some texture, to make it look real. I shudder. I mean - a lot of people must buy stuff like this to fill their homes and feel proud of it, but it's certainly not something I would ever want. So, in a time when you can buy 'art' in Harvey Norman and when much of the 'pretty' things you see in the shops have been made en masse in China, I feel GOOD when I think about my messy home filled with handmade bits and pieces, and old junk I've pulled out of the bushes! I'll let you know how I go when it comes to editing down when I move (C has said "I like your style, but I don't want all of it!") but for now I'm going to enjoy the notion that there must be other people in the world who like handmade things that have no purpose other than to help make someone's home 'theirs'.

... on wall hangings!

Seems like I'm in wall hanging mode at the moment - I can't stop! I've finally made those little Fishie Beasties into something, and now I want to make more. When I was photographing this yesterday I had my big industrial fan on and the little fish were clanking together merrily in the breeze, and it made me happy!

... on shells and thread and little pink beads.

I just made this wall hanging thing for C. We collected the shells together on our first proper grown-up weekend away, up on the beach on the Noosa North Shore. We spent a whole day lying on a blanket under a pandanus tree up in the dunes: reading, eating cherries, napping. Bliss!