What Are Your Functional Arts & Crafts?

My favorite painting technique for smaller projects:

Base coat the item in a very dark, dramatic color. Black works best if you want it to look like real metal. Then pencil a design onto the piece to use as a guide. Go over the pencil lines with a glue gun so you've got dimension. After the glue sets (about fifteen minutes so it's fully cooled), sponge the entire piece with various metallic paints. I generally start with gold, then silver, then bronze or copper. If you do use a black base coat you end up with a piece that looks like aged bronze or copper.

If I ever stop putting off painting my apartment I plan to use a similar technique on the mouldings so the transitions from room to room are smoother and not stark white.

If gardening is an art then I'll have to throw that in there as well.

Is mowing an art?

I've tried a lot of stuff. Stained glass work, ceramics, needlepoint, I knitted a 10' tie, glass etching, model rockets, made a methane generater and, ...

I seem to get interested in some craft and do it long enough to be average, or a little better, and then loose interest. I've stuck with computer graphics and Photography for a long time now.

TerryDoo! What a great idea for a printing block!

I know I'll be trying that glue/paint method on something. What a cool idea.

Morganwood, your mowing is definately an art. I miss your mowing threads just about as much as I miss anything I've ever known.

The best part is that if you mess up part of it the cooled glue can be easily removed with a razor blade.

Morganwood--Those are most definitely arts.

Yep.

(I made a birdbath tonight! I get soooo happy about MAKING things, whole things, beautiful things, useful things. There was a lump of clay, and now there is a perfectly sized birdbath drying on a rack which will then be fired and glazed and fired and then sit in the center of my garden. Ahhhh.)

AND the birdies will be happy!

Made a book cover once. Crumpled up a big sheet of tin foil. Unrolled it and flattened it out. It was crinkled. I pasted it to a book cover and then spray painted it black and after 30 sec or so I wiped off the paint so only the paint in the fough foil folds was left. Looked neat. Tried it on a dresser drawer, looked like crap!

Morganwood -- artistic lawn mowing? A good thing to think about during baseball season -- did you see how the Mets had their stadium mowed this week? Very cool. There's a children's book called The Sheep of the Lal Bagh you might like. It's the story of a sheep named Ramesh who "mows" the grass in the big city park of Lal Bagh in India. He cuts it in decorative shapes for all the great holidays and lets the children ride on his back. He is well loved public figure until the Mayor decides to replace him with a lawn mower. It's a great story if you're into decorative lawn mowing.

Actually it's theraputic lawn mowing!
I'll check the library for the book though.

Question: Today I went out to find a couple of speaker stands for my home theater speakers. $79 was the price of the decent ones I found and they weren't worth that. I thought of making my own. I'd like to make an acrylic base with flowers, or something else, inbedded in the acrylic. Has anyone worked with liquid acrylic? If so, could you tell me a few things about working with it. You can post it here or send it to: [email protected]

I just remembered another thing. I made my own paper to use for xmas cards a couple of years ago. Fun, cheap and, easy!

I also ran an Indian Lore program and made war bonnets and breastplates and taught Indian dancing. I've also scalped tickets which is sort of a craft.

My kids throw a lot of clay which they also glaze, some of which we use as serving platters.

My dad owned a foundry, and he used to fiddle around with styrofoam as a molding material. He'd simply carve the foam to the desired shape then enclose it in resin sand with a pour spout and a relief. He made some pretty interesting pieces, one of which we use a grave marker in our "pet cemetary". Three very good dogs buried there.

Another one was more intricate, a latticed tabletop, about 5' in diameter and only about 1/3" thick. I think he bought the foam mold because he's not that artistic. Anyway, when we retired it from tabletop use, it found a place as a cover for a enclosed wellpit, as it's quite sturdy so walking on it is not an issue.

One of his buddies owned a scrapyard (not surprising eh?), and his wife was an accomplished painter. Not to be outdone, he started welding together scrap metal, and has created some rather elaborate and well received scrap sculptures.