Year 20, Week 47, Day one (week 1090)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
12-12-20 Saturday
68 early AM, 81 as the high. Sunny with herds of clouds grazing across the sky. A little bit of showers before I got outside, and showers to the south, but dry all day. Earlier in the week we had a torrential downpour that allowed some freighters to sail up into the city and unload half their cargo directly at the doors of the warehouses. They had to stop half way through and head back to the ocean before the water levels got too low. Later in the week, the temps got down to 48, well below our 56 degree frost temps several days. I was able to take short cuts on the frozen canals on the way to work. I did not chance the large canals, figuring they did not have enough time to freeze solid enough to hold a car. The small ones were all right, though. We had a light breeze all day that helped. This weather report is brought to you by The City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.
Christmas is coming and since I finished my ornaments last week, I had two projects to finish before Christmas. One was to paint my Christmas Cards, and the other was to make some Aluminum Foil Flowers as a present. A card design appeared in my head during the middle of the week, so that got priority. Most years, I am painting Christmas cards for the family on Christmas Eve while also wrapping presents to give so everybody can open their presents that evening (it allows the kids to play with their toys all Christmas morning). Having a design, I decided that was the highest priority project. The picture is a Two masted sailing ship with triangular sails with Christmas lights all over it. I noticed a lot of my cards match some ornament I made that year. I made some sailing ships so that was my inspiration. One thought was some musical instruments, but that would have been more work than I wanted to do.
I had found my blank card stock earlier in the month and got it all in one place. I have a big cookie tin filled with the bottles of acrylic paint I use for everything. My carvings, my cards, covering repairs, etc. I brought everything out back of Mom’s house. I opened the largest of my two tables and had everything on there. I’ve always had the paints on the bottom of my basket I carry stuff in and had to dig down to get to the paints. The table was quite full. I put a bunch of the wood projects back in the basket to make room.
I chose a pack of single fold cards (I also have 4 fold card stock but don’t like that as much) that had 40 cards and 40 envelopes. I started with the background. I used a medium light blue for the sky, and a purple for the water, and applied them in a thin wash. That worked pretty quick. I soon found the table did not have enough room. I laid down the small table on the ground, without the leaves open, and started setting cards on there.
When I was done, I had 12 cards on the small table. After they dried enough, I gathered all the cards, stacking them, and then started applying 3 colors to the cards. The top of the hull was a tan, the bottom of the hull (water line) was a dark red brown, and I did two cabins on top, and then I used a dolphin grey for the masts just to locate them. I put the cards on the small table a bit more carefully before I started putting them on the big table. When done, I had 20 cards on the small table with no spaces. By then, it was late and I packed up. I was happy with the results. Nowhere perfect, but acceptable.
I kind of wanted to work with the foil, but that is such low priority in comparison. I will see how far I get with the painting of the cards tomorrow.
Year 20, Week 47, Day two (week 1090)
(January 17, 2000 was my first carving day.)
12-13-20 Sunday
Mostly blue skies, light breeze, very sunny. 69 as the low and 81 as the high. Very little humidity. CI was sitting under and awning all day and had a fan blowing to help on the project I was working on. It was a pleasure to be out. This weather report is brought to you by The City Of Pompano Beach Department Of Tourism.
I have some stuff stored in the neighbor’s garage so I agreed to maintain the yard for the owner. The house next door to Mom’s house had gotten a new roof and gutters. Heavy rains washed some of the sand at the base of the down spouts so I stopped at Lowes Hardware to pick up a few things that might redirect the water rushing out. I have a friend doing some work in the yard, which removed some of the grass (weeds that pass as grass), leaving the sand to wash around. I handed him the stuff I picked up and asked him to see what will work. I drooled all over the store as I was getting ideas for stuff to use for projects.
Santa told me that if I was a good boy all year, I would get the entire contents of one of these stores for Christmas. I do hope he has not learned about all those incidents that happened this year.....
I then went under the awning at Mom’s house and set up both tables. I wanted as much area as possible to lay out the cards as I could. Most years, I only had area to set cards out to dry to do 20 cards at a time. Since the cards had to sit for a period before the next color or next set of colors, I might do one, maybe two steps a day so it might take me a week or more to get the cards done. Being outside allowed the paint to dry faster. Also with the tables, I had room to do 40 cards at one time. Of course, doing 40 cards as opposed to 20 cards means it takes longer to get through all of them. Luckily, this time I am sitting rather than standing as I did some years.
Today was a big projects. I was going to add the water effects and then add the Christmas lights around the sails. First I set up white paint, brown paint and tan paint. Normally, I will use the caps of the bottles to hold the paint. I can simply put the caps back on and shake it and the unused paint gets re-mixed with the fresh. I just dip the brushes in the caps. I also have a small fogger cap filled with water to dip the brush in if needed and to clean the brushes when done. I was using small brushes for this. Mom told me to do a reflection of the boat in the water, and I was already going to add white-water at the water line to show it was moving.
After a few cards, what I learned worked best was to dot the paint and then smear it with my finger. I would do a few lines, or lines of dots of paint and then smear it. It was sort of streaky which one might find with water. First I did the brown which was near the boat. Then I would do the tan below that, and then some streaks of white at the edge of the paper for the sails. The dots did best. Then for the water line, I found that a large dot at the bow, then some really tiny dots down the water line and several large dots past the boat, and then smear my finger down the line gave me a passable effect of displaced water.
Paint would build up on my finger. There were a few times I had to add a little water to the painting to get the paint to smear, and bits of paint would rub up. I would stop, peal the paint off my finger and get back to painting.
When I finished, I let that set a little bit, then gathered up all my cards and was ready for the hard part. I had to do the Christmas lights. These are a whole bunch of little colored dots. It took some time to set up. I picked out ten colors and got 10 usable tiny brushes and set them up. As I started painting, I quickly found out that 5 colors was enough on each boat. What I did was I would do five colors, then on the next card I did five other colors. I had just done a couple cards when it was time to have lunch. I looked at my set up and realized it would take too much time to close everything up, so I rushed through my lunch.
I went out back again and started painting. After a while, two brushes were not doing what I needed so I cleaned them up and closed up two colors. After that, I overlapped some of the colors as I worked. Again there was an alternating of colors. I would see there was too similarity of the colors on the card and would do a color from the other set.
I had started this step at about 11:30 and finally finished around 3:30. That was a lot of work. Each card took time to add the colors. I was adding more dots than I would for a couple trees. The results could have been a lot better, but they are passable.
I have some pen work to do on the picture, and also lettering the back and the inside. I am shocked that I have another whole weekend and possibly nearly two weeks to get the cards ready. I did a rough count of the people I have to give cards to and am up to 32 at this moment, but may have to come up with more names soon. I am almost ready for them.
My brother had taken some drill bits home with him. He machined the shafts of the large bits so they will fit in the chuck of the little drill we use a lot of. He then used DRILL DOCTOR to sharpen the drill bits. He says that thing has paid for itself hundreds of times over. He told about one job where they were drilling with concrete behind the stainless steel they were drilling and after each hole, they had to sharpen the bits. One guy said he just buys new bits. That day, my brother sharpened his bits and the other guys bits almost continuously and the guy realized that at 2 at night, one cannot buy more bits. I think he went and bought a drill doctor for himself. I will say there is a learning curve. My brother said there was one bit that just would not sharpen so since the set he took from me already had that diameter, he tossed that bit. He really cannot sharpen smaller than a sixteenth of an inch bit. He returned the bit set. The bits he had extras of, he drilled into a block of wood to hold them and gave them all to me. I have other plans to hold them but that will be for next week or Christmas weekend.
My main plan for this week and next weekend is to finish up the cards. They will be handed out to many, but a few will have to be mailed. I do want to do the foil flowers. Some look easy and I might do a bunch of them and give out some bouquets to several people. I will have to see how things go next week.
2037
No comments:
Post a Comment