Commercial Projects, Retail Products, Turning

37 Pencils (in motion)

Video 12th January 2016

https://youtu.be/nPhjgA_vUvI

Please do go and view this on my YouTube Channel too, so the numbers can go up nicely. And SUBSCRIBE too please; that’d be lovely 🙂

Just for Fun, Retail Products, Turning

37 Pencils

12th January 2016

I should probably have started with turning a few shapes on a solid lump of easy-to-work wood, but no. The idea was in my head, so it had to come out, and this is what came of it. Having set up the lathe in a decent position at long last, I decided to make some Christmas baubles… out of colouring pencils!

Madness you might think. But no, insanity I tell you.

That was back in 2014. In 2015, after someadjustments to the method, I made a few more that went down to the shop (Homemade Wales) for the Christmas season. Sold out within a week!

So in a nutshell, the first job was to glue up some logs of pencils. 37 of them to be precise.

And then it was just a case of bunging the ‘logs’ on the lathe and turning them down into something that I quite like to consider as rather marvellous.

I say “just”. It’s somewhat more involved, delicate, and sometimes hazardous than “just”.

https://youtu.be/nPhjgA_vUvI

Please do go and view this on my YouTube Channel too, so the numbers can go up nicely 🙂

So here are a few finished items…

Christmas Pencil Baubles — Baubles #1 and #2.

The First Pencil Bauble — The very fist bauble turned. No finish applied.

Christmas Bauble made from coloured pencils — The third bauble turned; varnished, ribboned and hung on the tree.

Bobbin Style Pencil Bauble — From the 2015 Collection; bobbin style, and ready for the shop.

Ball Style Pencil Baubles — From the 2015 Collection; little balloons

2015 Pencil Bauble Collection — The 2015 Collection

New thoughts now for the 2016 Collection…

Chit Chat

And So That Was Christmas

7th January 2016

Here we go with another brand spanking new year, and things are off to rolling start. I say “rolling”… there was perhaps a little too much ingestion to avoid a hint of rotundity, so that’s how it feels to be moving about the place as I write; more like rolling.

And so January begins, and the workshop’s a bit full of… stuff, at the moment. Had to clear some fitness gear from the south wing – along with some craft boxes and a load of furniture that was cleared from one of the bedrooms just before Christmas – to make room for one of the Christmas trees (we have two; sounds a bit posh but… nah). So now there’s a clearance job needs doing before anything can be done out there, and the first job when it’s cleared is to give it the revamp I’ve been promising it for a while. And then… lot’s of exciting projects to crack on with. So…

Onward we go, and you too I hope. Happy New Year! Have a very sweet ’16!