The Alston Family: creativity

Sunday, September 1, 2013

August - The Month Of...

Metal Art!

(So, we didn't get this posted IN August because the end of the month was very hectic and stressful for us, but we promise the whole project was done by the 31st)

Jon was given a small brazing torch for his birthday in April and we hadn't had the chance to use it yet. Jon has always wanted to do welding and metal art projects, so we decided to do a simple metal sculpture for our first practice in metal working.

The only metal work I've ever done was some soldering in high school, so I really didn't have any vision for this project. Jon suggested we make an owl - I was down with that!

We found a cool owl drawing online (someone fantastically talented on DeviantArt) that had simple enough main shapes that we could cut them out of metal with the torch.

If we were REALLY into it we would have cut out each feather and layered them on, but that was a little far above our skill level for beginners.

I cut out the owl drawing and then traced the shapes onto a sheet of metal.

Then came the torching!

The hardest part was getting the gas and oxygen to balance right so that the flame would neutralize. Once we had it going though, it was a lot of fun!

I cut out the body and Jon did the face and tail feathers.

Once the metal pieces were cut out, we picked some hardware from a collection of Jon's grandpa's old tool box to make the eyes and feet - getting creative with ball bearings, gears and wing nuts :)

After marking where we wanted the pieces to go and lining them all up, we drilled holes to make space for the screws.

Everything was assembled...

And ta-da! Owl sculpture.

Although it was super basic and rough, I just liked being able to use the torch and see a different kind of creativity! I love being able to use things that are otherwise separate and unrelated to bringing them together and make something totally new. And I kind of like that the edges are uneven and have bubbled parts where the torch melted the metal. The flame made really cool colors around where it burned the metal. I really like the dimension it brought to the project. It was a really fun new project for us and I'm super proud of how it turned out!

Monday, April 29, 2013

April - The Month Of...

WOOD-WORKING.

This truly was a month long project! We worked on it over many days.

Disclaimer: it turns out that we always work on these projects on days when I don't have work and we look all grungy because we want to get messy before we go anywhere - so we're pretty much look like we're un-showered and messy in all of these pictures :)

It all started with a log.

I cut notches 1.5 inches apart

lined it up

and used the Miter saw to cut the wood discs.

I love this shot with the wood dust flying!

Jon cut the rest since he is much more efficient than I am.

Just like butter.

Inside, I traced 1.5x1.5 inch squares on the cut discs.

Then we cut out the cubes.

Mine were a little rough around the edges.

Jon and I decided to get out the table saw so that we'd be a little bit more safe.

His cubes looked amazing!

We let them dry over a couple of days.

Turns out we probably should have let the log dry out first... because they majorly cracked :(

So we went on a trip to Lowe's!

We picked out furrings which are already 1.5 inch square all the way around.

Kate was an excellent helper!

Back at home, we got out the Miter saw again and Jon cut cubes 1.5 inches at a time. I did the initial sanding with a coarse sand paper to smooth out all the corners and edges.

Jon followed up re-sanding them all with a fine grit sand paper to make the cubes extra smooth.

The blocks were then sealed in a food grade mineral oil.

Kate and I picked out a traditional font on the computer and printed out all the letters. Jon fired up the wood burning tool and picked a nice tip. He burned all of the lower case letters on one side.