Faux Bone Leaves

Pictured, leaf forms made from 1/16" Faux Bone with half-drilled Swarovski crystal pearls.  Colored with Ranger Adirondack alcohol inks.  I used five different ink colors, plus tiny, random dabs of gold mixative.  Applied with the generally used standard dauber for this brand of ink.  According to conventional wisdom, one should not reuse the dauber.  I found this to not be true, at least in applying
ink on these and several leaves which are in the process of completion.  The same application of ink is used on the reverse side.  One leaf is made as a pendant, the other as a brooch.

Next post, more Faux Bone, new project.

Segmented Faux Bone Pendant and a Bail

This pendant presented a host of problems.  There were some trial and error pieces before the above came about.

I put two pieces of Faux Bone together with double-sided tape and sanded the top side and bottom to remove the shiny surface,  (the top is 1/16" and the bottom is 1/8"). I turned the bottom side up and using a circle template, and a 5 mm lead pencil, I drew the outer circle and then the inner one, making a washer shape. Then I roughly divided the washer into uneven thirds.  I wanted the end result to have three segments of unequal size in length.

To keep from smearing the drawing during sawing, I sprayed it with PYM II.

I sawed out the outer circle, filed away the saw marks, keeping the sides straight up and down, and then separated the two pieces.

I drilled an access hole for the saw blade into the inner circle and sawed this out.  Then I sawed out the segments.  I wanted a gap between each segment, so these had to have a bit sawn off one end.  Then removed the saw marks and sanded the top of the segments. I roughly reassembled the segments and colored them with different colored alcohol inks.  The inner edges were colored gold using a gold leaf pen.  I also colored the inside of the bottom disc and drilled a hole in the center with a No.67 drill bit for the 20 gauge wire which will form the post for the half-drilled Swarovski pearl.

The bail.  Previously, I had to figure out how to make a bail for the pendant.  After fiddling around with this and that,  here is what I came up with:

A short, bent piece of 1/8" outside diameter copper tube held by two 20 gauge wire staples, ends riveted on the other side.

Now to assemble the pendant.  Each segment piece was attached, one at time, with 20 gauge wire rivets, done on at a time.  To hold a segment in place while drilling and riveting, I used the Speetog plier/clamp.  These can be hard to find, but anyone can make a serviceable plier by purchasing a mini vise-grip or similar plier and padding the jaws with strips of leather held on with super glue.

Once the segments were attached, the pearl was placed on its post with one small drop of super glue.  Oops!  I'm not supposed to say "g__e." I'm supposed to say something like "Industrial Strength Adhesive."

Then, lastly the outer edge was colored as the inner edges were.

Something a little different coming next weekend.  Still more Faux Bone and Alcohol inks and half-drilled Swarovski pearls.  Stay tuned.

OLIO

As promised, I'm back, first week in August.

I see new followers.  Welcome to the blog!

Olio.  What's with this?  It is a word that means an eclectic collection of art or writings.  There are several other meanings, such as a hodge-podge of items.  The word is used by crossword constructors because of the number of vowels.  Here, I'm using it to indicate this blog entry contains a bunch of different things.

HOT, HOT, HOT! and DRY, here.  Although not quite as hot as some other nearby places.  We need disparately something to break this persistent high pressure dome that is sitting over the middle part of the country.

I've been experimenting with alcohol inks.

Here's a snap of a couple colors.  There's a slew of differ colors available.  You might look a a bottle and say, "Gee, only .5 fluid ounce?"  Ha, ha, these are INTENSE inks, and a little, very little, goes a loooong way!

The above pic shows using common Q-Tips to apply the ink, daubing it on.  The colors are sailboat blue and denim.  Guess what?  I can reactivate the ink on the Q-tips with either Adirondak's Alcohol

Blending Solution, or 91% Isopropyl Alcohol.  You can use regular 70% Rubbing Alcohol, but the 91% is much better.

A pic of the brush used to make drk clouds on a piece called "Witchy Moon."  20/0 is close to the finest you can get. There are finer ones available.

Here's another example:

The three tiny dots of black on the upper left are supposed to simulate birds.  Not very great art!

So what's the material is the ink applied?  Faux bone.  A bit less than 7/8 inch in diameter, 1/8 inch thick.  The finding at the top is 20 gauge copper, patinated with Patina Gel (liver of sulfur) from Cool Tools. This is good stuff.  Recommend it highly.

Made the wrapped loops with Wubbers new looping plier.  Works quite well.  The non-looped end of the wire was screwed into a hole drilled into the faux bone.  If you do something like this, remember to drill the hole prior to shaping the edges.  I used a tiny setting bur to make a little divot for starting the drill.  Otherwise the regular twist drill bit will skate around on the curved edge.  I also use a flex shaft in a drill press and a bit just slightly smaller than normal No. 67 one would use for 20 gauge wire.

After drilling all the holes, the pieces were filed, rounding the edges, with No. 00 and No. 1 half round Hablis files.  Then sanded with the usual schedule of sandpaper  grits, 320, 400, 600.  Wet, always wet sandpaper.  To facilitate sanding the flat front and back of the pieces, I place tabs of tape on one side of a piece to grip it better, and the sandpaper grit side up on a small piece of plexi-glass.  The wet paper will stick to the plastic.  Saves sanding  the fingers. Ouch!

Also, made a small improvement on the bench pin by putting a small bevel on the front edge and corners.

Back first part of September.  Thanks for stopping by!