hotwaxart art & crafts, made in Scotland

I seem to recall back in January I said I was going to try a bit harder to keep up with blogging …. now here I am two months after my last blog post finally getting round to doing my next one.  Oops!!  Must try harder

Life has been hectic as always!  As well as being a keen crafter, I’m also a freelance web developer and have been busy with new & existing clients’ websites.   Add to that the fact that I’m also a full time student at the moment (I decided on the spur of the moment last summer to do an HNC at the local college!) and have two pre-school children … you can see why time gets away from me sometimes!!

Anyway … I’m dabbling in a new hobby at the moment: pottery!  But before I get to that, I’d like to share with you a fantastic painting I commissioned for my mum’s birthday.  The artist is Nicki Macrae and she is *amazing*.  The painting is the view from my mum’s old house – a lovely sea view that she misses now that she’s moved away.  Nicki happens to live in the same wee town I grew up in and, being a HUGE fan of her work anyway, it made perfect sense to ask her to capture the memory for mum in an artwork!

Here’s the painting (I hope Nicki doesn’t mind me linking to her Flickr account!) – isn’t it amazing!!

Needless to say, mum adores it & can’t take her eyes off it!  Nicki was a real pleasure to work with, so I can’t recommend her enough!  Check out her Facebook page and prepare to be amazed!!

Now, onto the pottery … it’s something I’ve always fancied doing, as I enjoy working on a smaller scale with polymer clay.  But I’ve always felt I’d never be able to afford a large enough kiln for firing it.  Then last week I thought to myself “but they didn’t have kilns back in the olden days..”!  So I’ve been doing a lot of research into more traditional firing techniques and I’m ready to try a few out – starting with a pit kiln.

So far all I’ve done is purchase some clay and made a few basic items to fire (I’ll take a photo tomorrow – it’s too dull now!).  They are NOT masterpieces!  I have a feeling I’ll break quite a few items during firing (especially the first few attempts!), so I’m deliberately not spending hours and hours on my creations at this stage!!  I’m hoping to have my first bash at a pit kiln in a couple of nights!

Stay tuned…

I got a brilliant jewellery making book for Christmas which covers loads of techniques, including acid resist metal etching.  The book talked specifically about etching silver using the very scary nitric acid!  Obviously I’m not keen to deal with serious acids like that, but it inspired me to do a bit of research into alternative etching methods.

I decided to start with copper etching and discovered a method for acid resist etching using ferric chloride.  This acid is much easier & safer to use when your home or workshop doesn’t include a chemistry lab!  The process is the same as for creating printed circuit boards from home, so it’s a popular technique for hobby electronics enthusiasts.

I’m going to write a full tutorial later, but here are a few of the pieces I’ve etched to whet your appetite!

I’ve been working on ways to make encaustic art wearable and have come up with these!

I’m really pleased with how they’ve turned out! I’ve started adding them to the new online shop (still a work in progress) and there’s only ONE of each available – so grab ‘em while you can!  They’re priced at £11.50 each including UK delivery.

Well, the hotwaxart blog has been sorely neglected lately and now it’s time to fix it!

2010 was a busy and quite stressful year for me on a personal level, with my youngest being diagnosed with autism and me starting a full time college course.  But things are settling down a bit now, so it’s time to get back to blogging!

While the blog has been taking a break, we’ve moved servers and I’ve unfortunately misplaced a few photos in the process – whoops!  So you might notice a few of the posts below don’t have images beside them.  I’m gradually digging the original pictures out,  so I hope to fix the broken images soon!

The hotwaxart shop is taking a wee break while I give it a re-jig, but I promise it will be back with a few reduced price clearance bargains to help make room for all the new bits & bobs I’ve been working on!

Stay tuned

I’ve fancied trying out enamels for a while and came across Efcolor enamels, which are low-heat (150°) and quite inexpensive, so I thought it’d be a good way to try out the enamelling process.

As a first project, I wanted to make some earrings for my mum as it’s her birthday next week.  I cut rough leaf shapes from copper, hammered a nail through the top to make a hole (my thumb took a few hits!) and enamelled both sides in shades of green.  Then I put a couple of jump rings between the copper and the ear wire and put a few glass pearl beads on.

Here is the end result:

They look nicer in real life!

I came across an article a few weeks back about how in olden times, servants couldn’t afford to have wedding rings made from precious metals so they would steal silver spoons from their employers and have them turned into rings.  I love this idea as there are so many pretty silver spoons around!

Mum gave me a spoon to have a practice with, as I’ve actually never worked with metal properly before (cutting, forming, soldering etc.) and this is the end result:

I should have done a “before and after” really, shouldn’t I?  Well, I’m sure you can all picture in your head what a spoon looks like

Anyway, this was my first attempt at metalwork and I’m really pleased with it!  The ring fits the finger I intended it to fit, is ROUND and shiny and is soldered together.  The solder joint isn’t perfect because the metal wasn’t the same thickness or size at the points where it had to join (!), but I’m still pleased with how it turned out.

I’ll be keeping it as a ‘starting point’ to see how my skills improve over the coming months as I do more metalwork & silversmithing.

Today we got our money back from the bank after last week’s fraud incident.  Still no actual communication from the fraud dept, so we don’t know if it’s been a mix-up or actual fraud.  Hoping they’ll send us a letter soon to put our minds at ease.  Still haven’t got our new bank cards yet…

I was checking my bank balance online the other day when I noticed quite a big discrepancy between the running balance and available balance.  Thinking it was either a mix-up or some horrific bill I’d forgotten about, I waited until this morning to check again in the hope that my online banking statement would give me more details.

So, first thing this morning, I logged in again and found exactly the same discrepancy and no explanation of the cause.  So, I gave the bank a call and it turned out that someone has had a nice shopping spree at my expense – to the tune of over £400!

I can’t believe it – am absolutely devastated.  The bank has cancelled our cards (it’ll take 7-10 days before we get our new ones) and is “investigating the transaction”.  Apparently we’ll get a call from the Fraud Department in the next 3-4 working days and they’ll give us a timescale for getting it resolved.  We won’t see our money back until their investigation is complete, so we’re down £400+ for the foreseeable future.

What’s amazing me is that there doesn’t seem to be any fraudulent activity monitoring system in place for current account holders that would have flagged this up.  I can remember ordering a takeaway online once using a credit card – the transaction was declined and within minutes I had the CC company on the phone to check it wasn’t a fraudulent transaction!  When we confirmed that we did indeed want to order the takeaway, they released the block and we were able to order without any problem.  I’d have expected something like that with the current account as well – a £400+ clothes shopping spree (we were told it was women’s clothes) should have flagged up as being suspicious because it’s TOTALLY abnormal for our account.

So, now we just have to cross all of our fingers and toes and hope that we get our money back quickly!

Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas & New Year!

I’ve got some exciting projects lined up which I’ll be blogging about shortly – stay tuned

Lots of snow here in Dunfermline at the moment – here are some photos to prove it

My youngest, about to disappear under the snow!

A tonemapped HDR photo of the street at sunset