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!