House progress

My house is taking shape.

Windows and doors really do make all the difference.

All the brickwork took 3 days to complete!

I made a new brick stamp as my first one wasn't the right scale.
And this one has more individual bricks so it covers more ground. 

Here's the house at the moment.

It's my biggest miniature yet!

Doing a Dexter

No I haven't been killing people.

I've been looking at blood patterns.

It all started with this book I got out from the uni library.

'Exploring the cutting edge in forensic science'

And they are not kidding with the graphic material warning on the front cover.

Stages of decay anyone?

My degree show piece is going to have some blood in it, so I've got to make sure it looks right, hence the reading about blood patterns.

And because I'm an art student I thought I'd get the water colour paints out to illustrate.

Blood drops.

Circular, and from heights greater than 50cm they start to spray out around the edge dontcha know.

Splashes.

Blood flying through the air, looks like exclamation points.

Misting.

It's what often happens with gunshot wounds.

And more misting, cos it's fun to do.

I blew on the paint brush so the paint splatters on to the paper.

So yeah, I have some interesting hobbies.

New skillz

I have learnt a new skill.

Macramé knots.

I learnt it here. 

This is the first bracelet I made using the technique.

For the centre cord I used a piece of black elastic so I wouldn't have to bother with working closures.

This is the set up I use.

The laptop playing 4od is very important.

And you see the green bead? I move it left to right so I don't forget which order I'm knotting, because when I'm watching 4od, it's easy to lose track.

I also tried knotting around a thin metal bangle with beads on the edges, which turned out well.

I think it looks like Christmas.

And I knotted around an elastic hair band which is pretty cool.

Now I have to stop myself from looking at things and wonderful if I could Macramé knot around them.

Friends, I will be cutting back to 2 posts a week for the next for weeks because with my degree show piece being one long project I have less new things to blog about.

Bringing in some help

Making an entire miniature house is a pretty big task so I called in some help.

"Goooooooood morning Fine Art family!"

Pretty soon the whole gang was there!

Michael was helping out with the window frames.

The girls were just posing because the interiors aren't ready to be worked on yet.

Ty and Paul are chilling on some of the window frames that I spent forever cutting out and painting.

I'm slowly making progress with this house but it's going to be a while until it's time to move that bus.

Man, I love Extreme Home Makeover.

Button up

Sad £2 top from Primark...

Sew on buttons!

I wanted a project that I could do in front of the tv that wouldn't take much thinking. After my dissertation my brain neeedd a rest!

So I decided to sew various grey/black buttons randomly on to this plain t-shirt.

I also made this small brooch that I can add if I feel like it.

I kind of want to sew buttons on to everything now.

And so it's begun...

...my degree show piece.

Or at least thinking about it a lot.

And this is what I'm thinking.

Two plinths. One with a house and one with a tree.

Stuff is going to be going on in both of them, but it's a bit too early for spoilers.

These models are miniatures of miniatures.

Mindplosion!

They're scaled down versions of what I ultimately want to make, just so I can give my tutor an idea of what I have in mind.

I tried to make these models exactly to scale, a 10th of the actual size they're going to be.

It involved a fair bit of planning.

And some maths.

But I actually quite enjoyed that.

As for the content of the pieces, I've been thinking about the last two minutes of this Roswell episode and have been watching a lot of Dateline NBC

Muffin in a Mug

Well it's more of a cake in a mug, but for alliteration purposes we'll call it a muffin.

My friend sent me this recipe when I was in first year and I recently found myself with an egg to spare so it was muffin in a mug time all over again.

Here's the deets:

4 tablespoons of self raising flour

4 tablespoons of sugar

2 tablespoons of cocoa powder

1 egg

3 tablespoons of milk

3 tablespoons of vegetable oil

Mix the flour, sugar and cocoa powder in a mug.

Add the egg and mix well.

Add the milk and oil and until creamy with no lumpy bits.

Microwave for 3 minutes.

It's pretty cool to watch the cake rise up in the mug!

When the time is up get a knife and stab it through the middle of the muffin. If it comes out clean it's done, if not whack it in the microwave for a bit longer.

I recommend eating it straight away while it's still warm. Perfect for if it's been snowing.

Which it has.

It can be a little bit dry so making up some hot chocolate sauce would be awesome, but I didn't think of that until I'd almost finished eating it.

(Recipe originally from wikiHow)

Surface

My parents bought me this book on model making for Christmas and it is the bomb-diggity (people still say that right...?)

It's got a great section on making surfaces and I've been trying out some of the ideas.

Which includes using tea from a used tea bag.

Crushing up egg shell.

And using herbs, which is making my studio space very... fragrant.

To put the materials into practice I made this simple piece.

The tea forms the basis of soil along with some paint and glue, and I added some of the egg shell too.

The mixed herbs, plus a bit of green paint, make the grass.   

This piece gave me a chance to practice printing bricks using my brick stamp.

The 5th Housemate

This is Skulden, our 5th housemate.

He's been with us since the end of October of our first year of university. 

Mostly he just hangs around the house.

Sometimes he plays monopoly. He's not very good.

He likes to have a good time too, but can sometimes get carried away.

But the best thing he does...

is dance.

When I Grow Up

On Monday to celebrate handing in our dissertations (yessss!) there was a 'What I Want To Be When I Grow Up' themed party at the SU bar.

Since I go to a university that specialises in art there was a danger that everyone would just turn up as an artist.

But people really got imaginative.

The winner of the best dressed award was a scuba diver. 

I went as a country singer, which was really an excuse to wear this lovely vintage dress.

My friends went as Mrs Motivator, the President of America and Miss World.

The night was also a fine art fundraiser as we need money for our degree show publication.

This meant there was a raffle and I won a voucher for Prim, a vintage shop here in Norwich.

Exciting times.

Bonus photo; reading up about my favourite country stars before we went out.

So what do you want to be when you're older?

Can't Quote The Book

Here's the final piece from my exhibition which was a collaborative piece between Natalie and I.

I made this chair over Christmas which was a definite challenge but I'm really please with how it turned out.

(Apologies for the less than perfect photos. I still haven't decided on a new camera to buy. Any suggestions?)

There's an open book on the arm of the chair and a pair of glasses on the floor; what's going on??

The glasses were made from twisted jewellery wire and dried PVA glue for the lenses.

I also made a rotary phone which I like almost as much as the chair. You can't see it but I made a tiny plug for it to go in the wall. 

This was one of the miniature portraits Natalie painted for the piece.

The girl's got skills.