Archery Tournament Trophy (A Day of Archery, 2015)

I decided to try working on my painting skills. I grabbed a tiny brush meant for painting minis, and built a small wooden bridge to rest my hand. I got to work:

 It's hard to tell how the lines are doing while tracing, at least for me. Once I removed the original image I was very, VERY pleased with the line work. It has a somewhat irregular, rustic feel but I was ok with that.

Matting, to remove highlights

Matting cleaned up

I'm particularly pleased with this leg. The knee was a great accident.

After silver staining. I also wanted to stain the rock at the archer's feet, for some kind of vertical balance, but I tried three times and it blended "away" from the line too much. I moved on without it.

The finished and framed piece, at the archery field.

Pattern Shears

Going to try something new at my Laurel's suggestion to see if it makes me happier with my cutting accuracy. A lot of the super-precise artisans I've met online seem to use pattern shears, and she suggested it for me.

I hopped over to my local supplier and got a pair. The owner, an awesome woman, had me find them in a box under a cabinet because she hasn't had demand for them in years. The shears give a seriously big gap (and I triple checked they were foil, not lead not mosaic). For a few bucks I grabbed them anyway, but kept researching. I found shears that kept saying they removed 1/32" for foil. The pair I got locally can not be 1/32". I ordered a pair (made by Mika Intl, via Amazon, but this is not a plug). They DEFINITELY remove less pattern:

"Squeeze-bottle grip" foil scissors, left, Mika Intl shears, right.

I'm working on cutting up a pattern right now, planning on starting to cut it tonight. Lots of curves and difficult cuts, it should be a great test if this method works better for me than working "English" (glass on pattern on lightbox).

Estelle's vigil: Family Badge Platter

Estelle did not ask for this, but some time ago we discussed the idea of making a matched set of platters that, when joined, would form her family badged (used by her whole mundane household). I decided this was as good a time as any!

The plates feature blue bars on a clear (white) field, with green in the corners (skipping heraldry terminology for non-heralds). Because I use a base layer of clear, I didn't see the need to fill in the second layer with clear. This is the first time I've tried any fused project with clear. I expected that the blue might spread or contract a bit, but I thought it would be acceptable:

HUGE bubble. Right beneath the base layer, not between two. The edge was also very irregular. ALSO, the grey sharpie used to tag the glass didn't burn off as I had expected. So, scrapped it and started over.

This time, I added clear layers in the top. The results fused much more smoothly:

And the slumping went well. Initially the shape bothered me, I thought I was seeing the "dogboning" problem I've had in the past with this mold, and I had been correcting my slumping temperature down to try and adjust. After a couple of days I realized they are fine; the molds have a slight curve in a plane I didn't realize, and the shape is closer to the mold's shape than I thought.

The piece in the top of these pictures had some old kiln wash fuse to the glass. For the immediate purposes, this is fine, but I plan to remake it so it has the clarity of the second (bottom) tray.

Lessons Learned:

• Applied kiln wash apparently has a shelf-life!
• Better results with even layer coverage.