Giveaway #1

Weekend Giveaway

Over the next few weeks I'm going to be giving away a few items. These items were destined for my etsy shop but because of some small flaw or imperfection I just don't feel good about selling them. There is nothing structurally wrong with these pieces, there not going to fall apart or anything. They just don't pass my quality control to be sold. So, instead of just keeping them in a drawer somewhere I'm going to give them away. The way I'm going to do it is pretty simple, just leave a comment in this post and you'll be entered to win it. This giveaway will also be sponsored on a few other blogs. My Sisters blog, and Moorea's blog. Feel free to check out their blogs and also have a chance to enter two more times to win by leaving a comment on their blog. You have through Sunday to enter. All the names will be collected and a winner will be chosen randomly and announced Monday morning. Good luck.

Here is the item I'm giving away in this weeks giveaway.

Spindle Motor Pendant.

This pendant is a reclaimed spindle motor from an old hard drive. It has been set inside polyester resin and polished smooth. The sides have been rounded giving a lens effect. Its roughly 1.25 inches wide by 1.5 inches tall and .5 inches thick. It hangs from a 20 inch waxed cotton cord and clasps with a hand made sterling s-hook.

The flaw. The copper tube from which the piece hangs from shifted while the resin was being poured and is crooked.

Interested in acquiring this piece? Leave a comment for a chance to win.

If you don't end up winning go to my etsy shop where I have another piece similar to this one for sale.

Watch This

SEA to NYC

Here is the cross country time lapse I took back in May.

 We were tasked to deliver a sculpture we helped create for John Grade. It needed to be driven from Seattle to New York. The piece was finished the morning of May 5th, packed into the truck, then we headed off. We had two half days and three solid days of driving. Listened to a lot of music and a lot of Sterolab. We encountered pretty much all weather you could think of. Each night we found the cheapest motels to crash at and one night to save money we decided to sleep in the truck in a Walmart parking lot.

In all there were 27,373 pictures taken to make up this time lapse. A canon t1i mounted on the dash with a Ti-82 calculator acting as a intervalometer to take a picture every 7 seconds. The stills were either taken with another Canon T1i or a Canon Ae-1.

The song is Go Do by Jónsi.

What I Was Up To

Alderbrook Station

This weekend I went down to Astoria to help with an instillation at Alderbrook Station. I mostly helped finish up the piece then became a parking attendant/bartender. Not exactly the kind of work I like doing. Usually at art openings I like to stand back in the shadows and actually look at and enjoy the work. Anyways, it was good to get a little bit of work, even though it was three hours away, and five hours back today.

Alderbrook Station is an old gillnet shed on the Columbia River. Its one of the few surviving and has been restored and maintained to be used for art instillation, studio space, and other various things. You can see their facebook page here.

Here are some pictures that I took while I was down there.

What I'm Up To

Wood Paint Buy?

(would it?)

So I'm making a bar top for this guy that's been shaking up with my sister. I'm using scrap pieces from Andy's guitar shop which I went down to pick up this morning. I'm going to make it out of a combination of alder and ash, butcher block style ranging in thickness of 2 to 4 inches.

Here are the rough pieces.

And here are the remains of the day.

More pictures of this project to come.

Another project I've been working on is painting Daniels truck. Here is a before.

And after a few cans of spray paint.

My etsy relaunch is still coming along but it's been put on hold until next week when I have more time. I'm gong down to Astoria this weekend to do some work for friends of Annie and Daniel. I should get back on Sunday and plan on posting more items on Monday and also plan on a few jewelry giveaways in the next few weeks. I'm also going to finish the cross country time lapse here in the next few days now that I finally got some pictures from Moorea. A lot going on right now.

Another thing, I'm selling this Jewelry display cabinet for Annie and Daniel. They had it for a show and it's just been collecting dust in the shop.

I'll give you people(or person) reading out there first dibs before I post it on craigslist. Price is negotiable, will consider interesting trades, or food, spicy ok.

Video

Windfall

Here is a video I put together of the project I helped install at the Seattle Center.

You can see the progression of this project in pictures in this slide show which progresses from the install back to the raw bells.

New Stuff

Pictures

I've been taking new pictures of all my old and new items. Its seems fairly simple but it ends up taking a long time.

Here are some of the pictures. I tried to capture them as to work best on etsy.

Here are some pictures of my ghetto photo studio I have set up.

I just have three light sources diffused with white paper. It works fairly well, its easy to set up. I found the lights at a thrift store. The paper on the two side lamps is June from my big calendar ripped in half and taped into a cylinder, it works really well because it's such cheap thin paper. Patent pending.

The top lamp is also diffused with a piece of paper, this time an old credit card statement, again really cheap thin paper.

No fires, yet. In all I think this set up cost me $10.

Etsy

Keywords

I use Google Analytics to keep track of my etsy shop and I've posted before on how I get some strange results when it comes to keywords that bring people to my items. Now I wish I could see just which items people are looking at when some of these search terms bring them to my site. I have no idea how these terms bring people to my shop. There are a lot of strange ones but these are my favorite ten, so far, in no particular order.

1. what is a headband with feathers called
2. vintage salt and pepper ducks
3. keepsake baby shower cake toppers pregnant lady 
4. fleece cat hat pattern
5. cat boutique
6. hanging kitchen towels'
7. hang low nipring
8. whole body skincare
9. womens upcycled recycled clothing
10. vintage nose studs screws

I'm at a loss for words.

What I'm Up To

Shootin' The Moon

I'm going to start the relaunch of my Etsy shop probably this weekend. First I'm going to shut it down and re-post all the items currently in there with new pictures and descriptions. I'm also going to be adding a bunch of new items over the next few weeks. I have been working hard on new items and new designs. I'm hoping that all this work pays off. I really need to start selling items, especially this month. I'm kind of going for broke and I hope it pays off. If it doesn't, it might be back to a normal person job.

Here are a few of the things I've been working on.

This is a simple copper inlay.

Here you can see the progression of the material.

Here is a lens pendant. I have a bunch of lenses that I have collected that I'm going to use for a bunch of these designs. Each lens is slightly different and gives you a unique view when you look through it.

The back is a piece of copper that both acts as a way to hold the lens in place and as a way to hang from a necklace. The screws hold the copper in place and go all the way through the wood where they are sanded smooth giving it a riveted look on the front.

The view through the lens.

These are two pieces I've had done for a while but have waited to post, they are spindle motors from hard drives cast in resin. There is also a copper tube that was set in the resin making it simple to hang. 

Here is a look at just what you can expect in my shop over the next few weeks.

Recomend You Watch

Where the Wild Things Are

I finally got around to watching Where the Wild Things Are. I'm not sure what took me so long but now I'm a little disappointing I did wait so long to watch it. This movie is simply amazing. The visuals are just beyond belief. There are a lot of artistic elements throughout the film and some pay homage to artists work like Andy Goldsworthy. I would have loved to work on this film and helped build some of these sets if only to be apart of this world for only for a few days. This movie, like the book, sparks the imagination. I remember the first time I watched the trailer for this movie, probably one of the greatest trailers ever.

We need more movies like this and less movies that simply dumb kids down. It seems like kids have less creativity and imagination these days. Here is a good article on that.

I highly recommend this movie if you have not seen it yet.

Busy

Hot & Busy

Damn it was hot today, I totally understand the whole kilt thing now. I haven't been posting much lately because I've been busy trying to find work and also working on things for my etsy shop. I'm working on some new lens pendants which I have a bunch of rough wood blanks cut out for. I'm going to post them here pretty soon with my other items I've been working on. I've been wanting to relaunch my etsy store for a while but I was so busy helping other artist with their own projects I had to put it off. Seeing how now I don't have any other work at all I sort of need to get my shop up and running and start selling things on a steady basis otherwise I'm pretty much screwed. I've also kept busy doing odd jobs and some photo and video work but nothing steady and also nothing that will pay the bills. For all those reading out there, if you know someone looking for help, let me know. I think I'll be ok for the next few weeks but if I don't find something soon I think I will have to start implementing some of my New York strategies right here in Seattle.

Until I have more time to get back into my normal blog routine I'll leave you with this amazing video I found on Vimeo.

Recomend You Watch

Hunger

Hunger is a film from British artist Steve McQueen. In short the film is about the 1981 Irish hunger strike, but for a more depth insight look here. For more info on the hunger strike in general look here.

The first time I tried to watch this film was on Netflix and there was something wrong with the sound and the dialog could only be heard off and on. I was a little disappointed because the scenes and cinematography were just beautiful and at first I thought Steve McQueen took a lot of artistic freedom and created some sort of silent movie to express the silence of the prisoners or something. I finally figured out that in fact the problem was with Netflix. So about a week later I watched it again when it was fixed. I have to say this movie is brutal and raw, probably the hardest thing I have watched since Schindler's list. Steve McQueen does not hold back, there is not quick cut away from something that is about to happen. If you can get past all of that this movie is really well done and has some amazing scenes. Here are some of my favorite.

This scene is actually one long uncut dialog between Bobby Sands and his Priest, it's actually longer then 10 minutes which is how long of a video you can upload on youtube.

This scene is of Bobby Sands laying in bed after not eating for over a month. He is starting to see hallucinations of birds flying.

Here is the trailer for the film.

Like I said this film is available to watch on Netflix instant view so go check it out.

Thrifty #13

The way to a man's heart

This weeks thrifty is on a cook book I found at value village. It's The Settlement Cook Book: The way to a man's heart. This book has an extensive collection of early American recipes mostly from Jewish or German immigrants. I don't own many cook books, maybe 2, but I think this is a good one to own, it pretty much has everything.

The copy I bought is from 1951 and is the 13th addition. Its actually in really good shape for being that old and a cook book. It probably was not used much in its previous home.

Check out the contents, pretty much everything you wanted in classic American food.

There are a lot of things I want to try in this cook book such as all the amazing desserts and cookies, there are however many things I don't want to try.

They also have a recipe for Eggs A La Buckingham, which looks similar to Eggs A La Goldenrod but not quite, this book is only from 1951 and it would probably be a few more decades before someone would stumble upon that creation.

I think this is a good find, there is a lot of useful information in this book and the recipes are very well explained and cross referenced. I think I might blog about some of the things I make from this book and might even come up with a new post called Settlement Sunday, or Saturday.

The Settlement Cook Book at Value Village: $4.99

What I'm Up To

Copper Plates

I'm making a few more copper plates. These new ones will be larger then then the ones I have in my etsy shop. I make these plates out of recycled copper I find in scrap piles. I think this sheet was original a piece of flashing for a building and is somewhere between 14 or 16 gauge.

I'm documenting each stage and I think I will put together a little video of the whole process but until then here is a short clip showing the annealing process I did using my bbq.