The products.

For the more refined pewter pieces, I pre-pierced the general shape of the pendants before fly pressing. 

I am drawn towards the finished pewter pieces with the broken but distinct borders which just frame the words so nicely. The little nuances in the contour of the piece give it this authentic kind of feeling. 

For this piece I used a visually strong silver, oval jump ring on a piece of tea-stained lace.

I chose this lace in particular because it is made of thick strong material with texture to it. It does not feel like the new, flat materials often used now days.

It also added a touch of the feminine to an otherwise quite masculine pendant.

 For the piece below I letter punched sugar&spice on one side and all words which one associates with "all things nice" on the other side. Only the border was fly pressed.

 I put this piece on some old cotton fabric which I stained and stripped and knotted.

 With some of the metal components of the Sugar and Spice sandwich I made labels for ornamental bottles of "sugar," "spice" and "all things nice"

Tea staining

I did some of my own paper tea staining. I used water colour paper.

 I used wet and slightly wrung out tea bags as stamps ...

and left some to soak right in...

 I used a white candle as a resist to make a subtle border and then dipped an entire page in tea.

 I realised if left to its own devices the tea seems to dry quite evenly and so put plastic on after dipping this sheet to draw the tea thicker where there is contact with the plastic.

 I wanted to stain this small piece of wallpaper and so tried to use it as a stencil at the same time.

 I also stained some white lace I had bought and used it as a sort of stencil too.

 Here is a before and after effect of some white and some tea stained lace.

 I used a cut out of mary and her lamb to put candle wax down as a resist and stain around it. The subtlety of the white and brown feels aged.

 Slightly more challenging was my attempt at stretching a stained piece of paper around an embroidery frame...it gets worn and a bit torn but I am trying to decide whether or not that is in fact more desirable in my context of making an old-looking nostalgic-feeling object.

 The feeling of an old fashioned frame with aged content goes nicely with my nursery rhyme theme, i think. It allows for illustration format.

Nice things in Jhb.

Discotiquity is what I call it. I found myself in the most visually interesting place I have ever been. The Classic Corner Headquarters (CCHQ), a club in Johannesburg, is full-to-overflowing with antiques and cult-classic posters, pirate paraphernalia and musical instruments. It feels like there are thousands of stories all around you. I was in folkheaven. 

Vinyl Record Bangles Revisitted

 I have been fighting the idea of leaving my record bangles plain because i just feel they lack substance without some eye garnish :P I was using lace and button or silver silhouette details to add some context to them, but have recently tried my hand at engraving them with an electric engraver.

 While the engraving was fairly successful on the flat records, once bent up it bent out leaving only the deepest enravings visible.

My next step is to send some flat ready cut record pieces (of wich i now have stacks) to a professional hand engraver to see if by our skills combined we can make some beautiful bangles.
I also noticed recently that it was common for Victorian cuffs or bangles to be made in pairs, and think this approach might suit the vinyl cuffs- especially in that i have always considered them to reference old fashioned sleeve cuffs.

The Life of Inanimate Objects

I virtual-stumbled upon this artist who makes beautiful jewellery using old teacups which might otherwise be cast aside. They really seem to have a life of their own and a story behind them. They were possibly somebody's favourite or worst, or kept in a cluttered cupboard only to be used for special occasions and special people, but as subtle or obvious someone's reaction to them, i find it hard to believe people could have been indifferent to them.

http://www.cleverbastards.co.nz/html/blob.php?document=23382&filetypecode=2&fileId=7264