Copper flowers & leaves for a new wall piece

Fold forming has become my newest passion, after having tentatively tried out a few folds, basic line folds etc to create a cuff , I decided I had to be brave enough to try out some of the more complicated folds. So I decided on the start fold, looked pretty and I thought it might be easy enough. Well turned out its not exactly easy but yes it was a lot of fun and my first attempt turned out to be quite nice looking! To begin with I used 24 Gauge copper as recommended in the book on fold forming ,that has pretty much become my bible :) unfortunately I realised I wasn't strong enough when it came to bending the sheet with my bare hands :(

So I bought some 26 ga. & then these were the results

          Starfold in 4 by 4 inches

              Starfold in 2 x 2 inches

           Leaves made in ruffle style with a line fold

The star folds as well as the leaves  are all going on a new piece, I am keeping it a secret for now ;) but  before you see there is an even more fun piece coming up !! Stay tuned :)

Foils on oils

         In my last post for the year 2011 I had written about starting something interesting which combined both of my  passions, oil on canvas and metal work, well I have been thinking about the same for a long time now and have come up with something like this: I intend to paint with brushes as well as palette knives creating abstract paintings in oil on canvas and then incorporate copper pieces in the form of foils and sheets which will be worked upon individually and then treated to different patina processes. 

               While I am still not entirely sure, as to how I intend to attach the copper pieces to the canvas, I am hoping to incorporate fine copper wire and actually stitch the copper pieces onto the canvas! Well my experiments will be here for all to see in a few days, but for now, here are the two oil on canvas experiments to begin with .
Here's what they look like right now ! 

P.S. By the time I had the pics clicked for this post I had attached two foil pieces with blue patina on them.Do drop a line and let me know if they are even visible to you! :D

A quiver fit for cupid- a metal and enamel story.

Close up of electro-forming

Have been concentrating on my jewellery for a long time now, and had put all of my painting and metalwork on hold. Having managed to create a goodish stock of jewellery I figured I could reward myself with a little bit of sculpture yay!! So the project I am working on is 'Quiver of arrows' An enameled quiver filled with enameled arrows. But its not all enamel there is a good amount of metalwork involved as well, along with the shaping, forming and soldering one of the techniques I am going to use is electro-forming.

The two sides of my quiver with
electro-forming on the top half

In short electro-forming is a process similar to electro-plating  where metal is plated or added upon another metal surface but in electro-forming metal is selectively added rather piled onto just specific areas to create textural effect. Here you can see the two halves of the quiver, these will be joined together by a column of rings on the sides around a copper armature. On the top half of the quiver is going to be a surprise element any guesses ?? Will keep posting updates as they develop, for now I am going with a cool colour scheme for the enamels but its an idea in progress, do check back :)