... on finding something, and using it.

I found my rotary tool a few weeks ago. I'd had it for years, but never figured out what all the various attachments were really for. When I was making things out of corrugated iron I'd tried it out on the rough edges but found that it didn't work how I expected, and then I thought the extension arm thing broke, so it was packed away and put on the shelf of tools-that-might-have-been-good-but-weren't.

I'd been restocking a few of my watercolour eggs, and in the process of watching how the pigment settles in different ways according to the density/texture of the plaster, had suddenly wondered how engraving into them would go. I dragged out my rotary tool and gave it a whirl. It wasn't broken - I'd merely forgotten how to put it together, and with C's help the extension arm thing was reassembled. After a trip to the hardware for a new set of Dremel engraving/carving bits, I was set.

I had in mind a new style of hanging egg decoration - something jewel-like and intricate, with bits of worn gold and silver patina, a dark watercolour wash with splashes of messy bright colours over the top. Something a bit unlike anything I've done before - 'tarnished bazaar'.

Sorry about the manicure. What can I say? You should have seen my fingers after I'd used them to apply the gold and silver Rub'nBuff. Yuck.

 I kept the engravings simple.

This 'dotty' version ended up being my favourite. Adding a bright colour over the top of the engraved areas made it really shine.

Here they are, varnished and be-ribboned and ready for market.

I had a small batch ready for last weekend's BrisStyle Indie Market in City Hall - my first market for the year - and they will soon be landing in my Etsy shop, too.

Here's to rediscovering forgotten power tools! Now, about that bandsaw wrapped in a sheet under my desk...

... 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!

... onwards.

So, I'm pretending that we aren't in fact moving house anytime soon, and have decided to Get On With It. I'm feeling better already. The studio is vacuumed (it was disgraceful, the floor had been almost obscured by shredded paper and plaster dust for months. There were a few alarming rattles up the vacuum hose but I guess I'll figure out what they were when I go looking for that tool and can't find it.) and the room is feeling again like a productive workspace rather than a niggling job on my cleaning list.

To celebrate, I've been making some more mess! I've been meaning to expand on my seedpod wall hanging range ever since, a while back, I found a tiny sweet pine cone among my grandmother Mard's seedpods, which she collected on her travels around Australia with my grandfather. Followers of Kuberstore on Instagram will start to see the emergence of a pine cone theme.

Along with the pine cone, which I thought might mould up nicely, I recently found a handsome and suitable gumnut that I thought might also work. This morning I busted out some Pinkysil and went for it. I'm still in love with Pinkysil as a mouldmaking material - it sets so fast that you can go from 'no mould' to 'removing first casting' within an hour. Suits my impatient soul!

Inbuilt mould identification for the first time ever! I wish I'd thought of this before now, because I often find myself squinting into similarly-shaped moulds to try and figure out which one I want. This time I wrote (backwards) into the base layer of plasticene with a sharp pencil before pouring the silicone. Yay!

It's so exciting to crack open a mould for the first time and see the cast result. Double joy for me this morning!

 Pine cones and gumnuts... and wall hangings to come. Progress! AT LAST!

... on hair. Grey bits, and Something I have just learned.

I found my first grey hair at age seventeen, with a predictable degree of disgust. For a few years I experimented with as much hair colourant as any young woman, veering from almost-blonde to darkest-brown, with a rather risque peroxide and mulberry streaking period sometime in the 90s when I was a hair model for a girl I worked with. I found, like many young women, that dyeing your hair all the time really screws it up, and the only way back to nice hair (for me) is to grow it out, which takes ages. So, I haven't dyed my hair for years, and I have to say that I've enjoyed having hair in my 'natural' colour - generally brunette: darker brown at the roots, with degrees of sun-bleaching about the ends which may or may not in some lighting conditions look a bit reddish. And grey, of course. They've been multiplying happily ever since that first grey at seventeen. Scrutinising this photo of me and Ollie the other day prompted me have another look at the back of my head with the aid of two mirrors. As you do.

I made an interesting discovery. Some of those greys are as long as the longest hairs on my head, which at the moment is hanging at around the middle of my back. I'd never noticed that before. I also realised that as far as the placement of greys goes, I'm starting to develop concentrated areas of greyness that may be described as... streaks. Yes, grey streaks.

Now, I started loving my greys years ago. As a twenty-four year old I'd been introduced to a girl, only just older than me, who had developed a strong grey streak in her fringe, and she was rocking the look. I was in deep admiration of her grey streak, and it changed the way I felt about my own regrowth. I thought that, over the course of a (hopefully long) lifetime, a girl really only has a short time to enjoy her natural hair colour before it goes grey, and chances are it'll be grey a lot longer than any other colour it ever was. So, I chose to enjoy. I'm sure some women can dye the hell out of their hair and suffer no adverse effects - not me. I'm not saying I'll never hit the bottle again, but for now, no.

Anyway, I'll be forty next year, something that I can scarcely believe. Another thing I can't believe is this little snippet about long hair care which I've only just discovered. I had thought that my hair had a 'maximum length' (for me, about mid-back), where it just wouldn't get any longer before shedding and breakage and regrowth somehow cancelled each other out. Then recently - a revelation. I don't remember where I read it, but it was about how you get water out of your hair. I've always been a bit of a 'throw hair forward, cover with towel and scrub the blazes out of it' type of girl, and it turns out this could be the cause of my problem with (ahem) breakage. I feel so dimwitted about this. Apparently long hair needs to be treated gently! Huh? Squeeze the water out! NO scrubbing with a towel! NO! Such a simple thing. WHO KNEW!?

Not me.

... on packing, or not packing, and somewhere inbetween.

A little while ago I mentioned that we're moving house. At the time it seemed like the most imminent thing but due to one thing or another (more like 'one thing AND another, and then many more other things') it just hasn't happened yet. What with the holiday season and a long delay to a certain process (we're waiting on YOU, concrete-floor man!) it seems that my builder's maxim ("Double the time you think it will take and you'll be halfway there") is ringing true for us moving house, too.

I feel a little bit in limbo. I've been hesitant to get too involved in making anything, and my Etsy store remains closed for the moment. There's a number of piles of weeks-old half-started things on my worktable, and this sits awkwardly with me. Small hurdles seem insurmountable (WHY can't I drill right through one of my plaster eggs without breaking the bit, damnit?!) and the idea of packing up my lovely studio weighs heavily. I feel like I've only just moved in to it, although it's been more than a year. The as-yet-unpainted bathroom door mocks me somehow - I'll need to do that (insurmountable!) before we get our little house on the market. The garden here is running a bit rampant in parts, and is desiccated and bare in others. After all, there's not too much point in getting more vegies going when we'll be leaving them, is there? My gardening head is already thinking forward to the removal of weeds and sunburnt bromeliads at the next house.

So, as someone who doesn't really embrace change all that willingly, the stalling of this one has put me out of kilter with the things that are most good for my soul!

But, on account of the fact that it is suddenly February already, I'm feeling like I need to take control of this wait somehow. My Ma has suggested that I reopen my Etsy store, and pack up most of the studio, leaving out only the things I need to fill any orders that may come through. It seems so simple, but I needed someone else to point it out!

If anyone has any advice about how to manage indecision, running a handmade business through a house (and studio) move, and also about a vague and persistent lack of focus, please do share! I'd be greatly appreciative!

... 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 Christmasness and the coming year.

You know, I breathed a sigh of relief after my final market for the year. Unpacking the car for that last time felt like... like when you're finally on holidays from school, and they've been a long time coming! Don't get me wrong - I have enjoyed taking Kuberstore to the various markets this year, but I have to add that they wore me out in more ways than one, and I think this is why Christmas crept up on me this year. The house was unadorned until only a few days before, and I'm ashamed to say that this is the first year that I can remember that I haven't managed to send any christmas cards out. I'm more disappointed than I expect about this, because I did try! Making my christmas cards had, until this year, been an annual joy for me, but this time my first idea failed badly, and my second even more so, and then it was all too late and the whole lot sat in an accusing pile on my workbench until yesterday, when I chucked them out. But I have missed the rest of the process - the writing, the envelope-sealing, the addressing, stamp-affixing and the dropping-into-a-postbox. Perhaps some 'Merry January' cards might be in order?

But the past few weeks have seen rather a lot of company and a mild case of overeating rich foods - I feel like I would like to just eat plain lettuce for a while. A christmas tree was out of the question, given the interest it would generate in our monstrous teenage cat, so the Airspeed fan was bedecked, which was mostly-out-of-reach. Mostly.

A trip to the Rocklea flower markets a few days before Christmas saw me coming home laden with armloads of New Zealand christmas bush, and some of those bunches of northern-hemisphere-type festive greens that enlivened the house (and the cat) and filled up every vase I have. Their smell, drying slowly, made me think of snow, which was a good mental antidote to the heat here in Brisbane. I took refuge in our little air-conditioned house and also in the odd night away at my Ma's place at Currumbin, where ocean swims were had and my newfound interest in Instagram was indulged. Instagram is fun, isn't it?

Christmas itself was calm and foodful. Ma and I had our annual prawnfest on Christmas eve, and family came for breakfast on Christmas morning. C smoked out the neighbours (and alas, my washing that I'd forgotten was on the line) with the barbeque. Oliver-the-kitten (who was born on Christmas day) turned one.

"Me? Pull down your christmas decorations? Not me!" Yeah right.

Now, though, the greenery is in the compost heap and all the sparkly things are packed away. My home-made mint creams are all gobbled up, and the recycling bin is clinky with bottles!

I do always look forward to a new year, as it's a time of list-making and mental clearing-out, both things very good for my soul. It'll also involve an actual clearing-out for us, because we'll be moving house. It'll be sad to leave our little house here at Oxley, and I'll miss my lovely studio like mad, I suspect. But there's a room put aside for me at the new house at The Gap, which I'll report upon soon. For now... think termites, bagged eighties bessa-block, shagpile carpet and never... been... cleaned. But also... a great outlook and a big old pool that's like swimming in a sandy lagoon. Aaaah!

Happy New Year, all!