... 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 something achieved.

I live a ten minute drive from the Rocklea Flower Markets, and over the past months I've been treating myself every couple of weeks. I've bought freesias and banksias, Geraldton wax and proteas, and I've also found myself drawn to the greenery. A few times I've come home with a bucketful of waxy-leaved gum branches.

These macrocarpa gum flower buds were very enthusiastically received by Ollie, and after watching him chew speculatively on the dangling pod-like buds, I too was prompted to take action. Pinkysil action. It had been a while!

I shoved a thick wire into the trimmed end of each bud.

I then moulded a piece of plasticene around the wire so that when the silicone mix was poured, I would be left with a hole through which to pour the plaster when casting. This mould (and the others I've made like this) has been made upside-down.

I used a piece of PVC pipe (like the wired buds, it's pushed down into a base slab of plasticene) to contain the Pinkysil.

The Pinkysil doesn't take too long to cure - an hour later I was ready to try an initial plaster cast. The PVC pipe was removed (the very devil of a job!) and the original green buds taken out by making one clean cut with a very sharp scalpel down into the side of the mould. This mould is thick enough to be self-supporting when filled with wet plaster, and as long as I've taken care to close up the cuts accurately (the silicone tends to stick to itself a little) it doesn't leak.

Hey presto! You can see the cone-like shape at the top of the bud - that's where I moulded the plasticene around the wire. That part gets trimmed off, and I'm left with a complete plaster replica of the original bud.

It's now some days later, and the pods are fully dried out. I've been drilling, glueing, assembling and photographing a-plenty.

 Hello new plaster seedpod wall hanging!

... on things in progress.

There's some things going on here this afternoon. Thought I'd share.

This is a freakishly tiny chook egg laid by my Ma's Old English Game hen, Major Hoolihan. I've made a Pinkysil mould of it to commemorate it forevermore.

Trimmings from some freshly-cast plaster bird's eggs.

Plaster bird's eggs trimmed, sanded and ready for finishing.

C, ever watchful whilst driving, spied this fabulous old coil of a thick green sisal-type twine lying by the side of the road some months ago. He pulled up and grabbed it, sure it would come in useful. I have since absconded with it because it's very very nice.

Unwound, it makes lovely long green fibres that I am experimenting with working into a nest shape. I'd like to paint these eggs the palest palest green and speckle them with white.

When we were kids, my bro and a friend shimmied up some old telephone poles (long disused!) near our house and gathered the sagging wires. The big roll of copper sat in our shed for at least twenty years before I... absconded with it.

I am using it, little by little, to make more of my little bird's nest sculptures. This one (with passionfruit-ish curlicue) is finished.

This one is in progress. It's interesting how, when I bend the wire to form the nest shape, the outer surface flakes off and reveals the clean pinkish copper beneath. Within a few days these fresh parts will start to oxidise and go green.

Hope you're having a productive afternoon too!

... on ampersand fun.

Over the past few weeks I've been having a bit of fun with a new ampersand project. Recently, on one stupidly hot and humid Brisbane day, I exiled myself to my Ma's air conditioning and spent a whole afternoon carving a new ampersand.

Here's how I carve something. I trace a template onto an ordinary piece of plasterboard sheeting, the sort that you use to line the walls of your home. I get busy with a scalpel and hey presto! A big mess!

I wanted this ampersand to be able to stand up by itself, so I carved two and glued them together, and then plastered over the join. 

I really like the swirly-curliness of this ampersand. I like how you can see the definite 'E' and 'T' that make up the form of it ('et' meaning 'and' in french, and I don't know why I assume this but I do... is that why ampersands sometimes say 'et'? Other times they're more like a plus sign, or a squiggle.) and that  it says 'et' in a really Austin Powers kind of way!

When it wasn't quite so hot, I got out the Pinkysil and made a mould. It was a bit of a close call though - it was still quite warm, and the silicone had started to go 'off' (or set) before I'd even finished mixing the two parts. Eeek!

It turned out okay though. I always feel quite nervous as I watch something I've spent hours carving disappear under the Pinkysil, because I know that once the silicone has set and I try to remove the original from the mould, I'll have to break it into a thousand pieces to get it out. But - then the fun starts... will the cast result be as nice as the original?

Hurrah! Yes - I don't miss the original one bit! In fact, I really like the bulk and heaviness of the cast result - the Gedeo Resin Plaster that I use is a superfine, weighty material, quite unlike the lightness of regular Plaster of Paris. I've made a couple of these now, and having had some practice at the finishing (they need quite a lot of hand sanding) I'm feeling that they're ready for my Etsy store. And guess what? They DO stand up by themselves!

... on plasternessing something

The other day I was sitting at work gazing idly about my desk, as you do when you're trying to figure out what you should be doing next in a busy week. I try to save the clutter for home, but over the years a collection of things has sprung up on the windowledge - a rock, a paper cricket, some prototype plaster letters and a couple of dry bits of foliage. My eye came to rest on a seedpod I'd picked up while coming back from a curry lunch at West End some months back, and suddenly I had a vision.

That lunchtime I went back to West End and had a rummage - I found three more. When I got home that night I mixed up some Pinkysil and went for it!

(Oh Pinkysil. I'm so delighted Barnes have opened a retail shop here in Brisbane!)

White plaster seedpod Pinkysil goodness HURRAH!

... on a good thing.

Oh Pinkysil! You've made it a joy to make what I make! You're skin safe and odourless! You're quick-setting and you WORK!