Scrap metal sculpture as a gift

I have a friend and co-worker who is retiring Thursday. He is always very supportive of my artsy projects, and I thought he'd enjoy something personal as a gift. He already has 2 of my found object dragonflies, so my husband and I made this for him over the weekend. He loves to fish so I'm hopeful he'll like this.





We also made this. I need to paint it a bright color. I'm leaning toward red. Once in the ground, he'll be sitting on a perch among the flowers...







Right now my husband is doing the welding, I'm the designer, but I hope to be welding within the month. We just got a new welder.

I hope my projects inspire you to try using unwanted items in a new way, to personalize your yard.

I am worn out!

I came straight home Friday night and went down to Mom's and scraped paint for two hours. Then I went to town and bought paint, and called my ex husband to see if I could borrow his spray gun. Then I went home and started gathering supplies for Saturday. I wanted to be super efficient and not have to run around getting supplies. I wanted to keep the troops focused and get it done. I had enough scrapers, paint brushes, beverages, screw gun, paint, gloves, tools etc. for EVERYONE. It was supposed to rain yesterday afternoon, and I knew we needed to get it done Saturday. We painted 3/4 of her garage. It was in bad shape. We also scraped and touched up a lot of spots on the house, primarily one side and the back. There were 11 of us. When we started it was in the 30's and we had to wear coats and gloves to stay warm, but then we moved to the sunny side and things warmed up. We were shucking our coats quick.

Yesterday Heather, Abbey, Angie, Rachel, Kaylee and I went to a craft show in Delaware. It wasn't great, but it was still fun to get out with just us girls. Then I wanted Heather to go down to the shop attic with me to sort stuff. I need to get that building advertised for sale. I had been up there last week and that's the one place I hadn't cleaned yet of Mom's. There was a tenant in that apartment when she died and I did all the other stuff except that attic space. So it was a waltz down memory lane for us all. As normal, it was packed full of junk :) Some is just junk, and a few treasures, lots of old lumber, and miscellaneous. Heather, Abbey, Rachel, Kimberly, Sherman, Angie and I all dug through everything, and sorted out stuff we could use for crafts, our yards etc. I gave Sherman all the unwanted metal items to haul to the dump. We had a good time digging through everything.

After I came home Mark and I worked in our yard. Our neighbors moved out months ago but left trash everywhere, which continues to blow all over our yard. He and I got out and picked up 4 trash cans of trash out of our yard and theirs, and put it out for trash pickup today. I was tired of looking at it, and seeing it everywhere.

Did a few domestic goddess duties, nursed our sick cat and went to bed tired but feeling like I accomplished alot.

How was your weekend?

Good tired

This is my mother's house. She died in November 2009. My sister and I have been working with a very nice family to buy it. We had an appraisal last week, and the appraiser decided the chipping and flaking paint had to be scraped and painted before we can continue with the loan. So Saturday we rounded up the troops to "get-r-done".


This is the garage. A converted two story barn. It's also the primary place where said chipping and flaking paint presided. So, we spent many hours scraping and painting but thankfully we got it done Saturday. The day started out cold but fortunately the sun came out and warmed us up.














Hi,

I had a very busy weekend.

wings and things

I try to give each one a personality. For wings I've used metal strapping, screen wire, and vintage brass weatherstripping. Notice now one side of the brass looks dark and stripey, and the other side a burnished gold. I love that.

I also see I need to wipe the red marker off those gold wings...

What do you think? Do they need antennae? Does the biggest one need a mouth?

I have 13 more to finish in my current lot, and then I'm going to see if they sell.






Today was an extremely busy day at work. I feel whipped. I'm gonna kick my feet up and be a lazy slug tonight. I probably won't get much accomplished tonight.

The making of dragonflies

I started adding faces and wings last night. I try to make each one unique. I enjoy bringing them to life and giving them expressive faces.




Here are some wannabe dragonflies. Over the next few evenings they too will evolve into one of a kind, hand crafted, folk art dragonflies.

More supplies...

Needed some more spindles so I got resourceful....










Now to move onto wings and faces...

In the spotlight

You may have heard of our sleepy little town recently. We've been getting media attention due to flooding of the Scioto River. The flooding recently is the worst I can remember. It's hard to get around due to the numerous flooded roads, and school buildings. The kids around here didn't have school all last week, and looks like this weeks could be a repeat. Let's hope the rain stops soon, or we may need to start building an ark.

I started some new dragonflies yesterday. They are unfinished but I thought I would show you how they begin. This batch will be made out of old kitchen chair legs, chair rungs, vintage bobbins, and spindles. Here are a few pics to give you an idea of what I start with. I had planned to make wings today, but today has been too busy for me to do things for myself. So, I'll post more pics as they evolve into dragonflies.