Wedding Goblets

This is just a quick post since I’m absolutely exhausted, but I finished the wedding goblets for my friends Sterling and Carey today AND gave them to the couple at the wedding today (yeah, cutting it a bit close, I know), and I wanted to post pictures. I’ll post more about the project later, but these are pretty much miracle goblets. I was sick for three weeks out of the two months I had to make the goblets, the bronze parts had some serious last minute issues, one of the glasses fell out of the base and broke as the glue was drying and got replaced with another goblet top from several years ago that I managed to find on a shelf before the epoxy set, and for all of that I think they are pretty swell. So yay! Hopefully that is a good sign that through thick and thin this couple can make things work out beautifully.

Art!

I keep putting off blogging and I keep saying I’m going to do it… so here I go!

Eventually I plan on transferring my art blog to my website which will be getting a facelift soon: www.vandyhall.com. But for now, it can exist here, even though all of my past entries are terribly out of date.

Here are a couple pictures of a project I’ve been working on recently. It’s mostly done, and I went ahead and photographed it since I needed photos to apply for some scholarships. Allthat’s left to do is to sand blast some imagery and text on the glass vessel. Well, and disassemble and reassemble it of course. And take more pictures. It will be interesting to see how differently I arrange the contents of the glass once there is imagery on it. I originally planned on filling a lot more empty space with images rather than objects or texture. I may risk over doing things at this point, but hey, I have pictures of it now and can rearrange the contents as much as I need to in order to make it work after I do the sand blasting, so it can keep evolving as a work of art.

One of the things I’d like to eventually spend more time blogging about are interesting materials I try out. In the above project I made great use of an interesting two part epoxy resin produced by tap plastics. It’s a two part putty that you knead together and then model like clay. I shaped it over wire armatures. I have several other projects in mind with it and will try to remember to take some in progress pictures. And to actually look up the name of the stuff. One thing I was VERY impressed with was the fact that it was still good. My dad bought me a couple gallon buckets of the stuff as a Christmas present six or seven years ago and it was supposed to have a one year shelf life and it was almost as soft as when I first opened it when I dug it out for this project. At any rate, I promise to come back to this subject with more facts. But TAP Plastics, a seriously cool place!

In addition to making stuff I’m attempting to actually set some goals for myself and get off my butt and send in entries to shows again. I realized a little while ago that I’ve become incredibly lazy when it comes to shows. I’ve pretty much only done the shows that have fallen into my lap in the last several years. Most of my recent work has been commission based and craft or theme driven. But I’ve been really wanting to do more Art. A good way to make this a priority is to make doing more shows a priority. And I actually have some new stuff, probably enough to do a two or three man show even. I was reading a metal art blog where the artist was writing about having a goal of applying to a minimum of 24 shows a year. That seems like both so little and so many all at once. But it also seems like a good goal for me. So I spent some time last night looking through calls for artists and have five on my list so far as possibilities to submit for and am going to keep it up. I’m hoping that writing this stuff in a public forum will also help me live up to my goals…

Well that is plenty for today. I’m spending this weekend working on finishing up a wedding present and the wedding is tomorrow. You know I’ll be doing finishing working until the wee hours in the morning, because that’s how we work, so it’s back to the grind stone for me and I promise pictures after the lucky couple receive their gifts!

Making Medieval Mirrors

Earlier this year at Estrella (a medieval reenactment war that takes place in Arizona in February) I got an inquiry about making some medieval glass mirrors to be placed in 13-15th century style pocket mirror cases. Like many people, I'd never herd of pre-renaissance glass mirrors, so was intrigued by the possibilities. I was spending the three weeks directly after that at the Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York, and had access to their amazing research library. I proceeded to spend most of my non-work days closeted in the library, and a couple of surprised librarians helped me track down information on early glass mirrors.

Much to all of our surprise, it turns out that glass mirrors have been in use just about as long as there has been glass blowing. There are Roman references to producing mirrors from blown glass and tin or lead, and numerous small mirrors (such as the one at the left from Birka) and fragments have been found in Viking era graves.

The basic process of making glass mirrors is pretty simple - you have to put a metallic coating on the glass to make it reflective. Before the amalgamation technique was developed (a process developed in the renaissance requiring the use of mercury to mirrorize flat glass) this was done by blowing a large thin glass globe and pouring molten metal (lead or tin) inside of it while it was still hot. The tricky part comes in letting the glass cool down enough to have the lead or tin (which have a much lower melting point) stick to the glass rather than remain a moving liquid puddle without the glass cracking or popping off of the punty. Once the glass has been mirrorized it's broken free of the punty and allowed to cool and crack without annealing. This is why most pre-renaissance mirrors are also quite small, generally between around 2 and 6 cm.

So far in my experimentation I've managed to make several at least partially successful mirrorized globes, and have cut the fragments of these into viking style mirrors. As I do more experiments, I'm planning on refining the process for more consistent results and then also producing mirrors suitable for mounting in later period medieval pocket mirror cases. I'm also interested in mounting some of these as pendants. There is a reference to a mirror 'wrapped in silver wire' for use as a pendant that was found at Birka, and I would love any images or additional information anyone has on this.

Knitting Time

I've been out of commission the last few days, sick with the crud, which means I haven't gotten much real work done recently, but I have done a little bit on a few crafting projects. I've been working on a friend's fox hat, and just need to sew on the ears. It's from the fox hat pattern by Platypus Dreams. His nickname is fox and he's be bugging me to make him one of these for ages. I'm also using the leftover black yarn from the ears to make a similar cat eared hat for me.


I also got around to making something I've been meaning to work on for quite a while, a knitted tea cozy. I used some leftover variegated yarn from Mountain Colors, and knitted two strands together. I think it turned out quite nice, and may decide to knit some more for an upcoming craft sale. I'm especially fond of the tassel on top. It seems to do well keeping my tea pot warm too!

Needle Felt Strawberry leaves

I haven't been up to a ton of crafty stuff in the last couple of weeks, largely because I went down to a huge Society for Creative Anachronism event in Arizona called Estrella War. It is a week long event with fighting, arts and crafts activities, camping, socializing, shopping, and generally lots of fun. While I was there I did get a little crafting in. I made a set of needle felted strawberry leaves and a set of strawberry leaves with flowers to augment the coronets of some friends. The strawberry leaves represent being a duke and duchess. Since my friends haven't had time to get new coronets made or their current ones altered, I made the strawberry leaves as a quick fix to signify their new ranks. They turned out super cute!

What's different about VandyCraft?

A lot of craft blogs (and craft books) seem obsessed with re-using hideous 70's and 80's prints into ugly tote bags. I might be being a little mean here, but a lot of stuff out there just doesn't appeal to me. I do believe there is a place for diversity in craft, but it isn't all necessarily for me. So I'm making a craft bog to reflect my aesthetic, 'cause I can. :-)

Doing anything can be a valuable release, something fun and productive to pass the time, make one feel useful, or simply to do when one is feeling stressed out and needs to do something. I do like to make things with a purpose however, something someone will love. For me crafting is a fun and creative way to escape from working on specific fine art projects and commissions. A way to let the creative juices flow without worrying about having the product be professional enough or fit in with my current body of work.

Which brings us around to the art vs. craft debate. Ick. I'm going to go out on a limb here and state that I think there are some very artificial distinctions between arts and crafts. I am a firm believer in functional art, I think a lot of craft media can be "art," that art should generally have good craftsmanship, but that craft and art are not synonyms. There can be an object / project that embodies art and craft, but that pieces should be evaluated on a piece by piece basis. Craft and functional art are wonderful in that they make art accessible to everyone, and useful in our homes and everyday lives. In this day of disposable mass-produced goods I like to make my own well-made goods an buy unique and well-crafted items by local artisans whenever possible. I like to feel that my money (what there is of it) is going to support something I believe in and a purchasing something that will make me happy every time I use it and that will hopefully have some staying power.

Oh, and the pix? Just to color up my little rant there is a needle felted 3 eyed fish (probably one of the most trendy/ugly/striking color combos I've needle felted), and a recent commission I completed for some medieval style glasses.

I too need a craft blog!

If only to save space on my other blog. I already have a livejournal account where I keeps friends updated about my doings. And I have medieval glass, a blog dedicated to medieval glass and stuff that relates to it. However more non-medieval glass stuff is creeping into that blog and I would like to keep it centered around fine art, glass, and history. So here is my outlet for crafty goodness! I can't promise to update all the time, but I am going to try for once per week. Some things may be cross posted from medieval glass, but I will also try to limit that.

For my first post, here is a sample of crafty goodness. This is my Elder God, made in time to show at Orycon in November. I only recently uploaded his images to flickr. Gotta love cute and fuzzy Cthulhu! He is needle felted around a pipe cleaners and had poseable tentacles, wings, arms, and legs.