Metalwork: Recycling a cat food can

 I decided to use empty washed out cat-food cans, because we have four cats, so the cans are readily available  and are always just put in the recycling bin, so I wanted to use them to make something new. After looking at leaves, I decided to use the ridges that go around the can for the veins of the leaves. I cut diagonally across the ridges of the can, then cut out the two halves of the leaf. 

I used a punch and a hammer to make holes in either side of the leaf, then used wire to attach them together neatly. I made three leaves in this way, and when they are all put together I think they would make a nice necklace, or brooch.

 Next I used the base of the can, which is thicker than the sides and has circular grooves, and put enamel powder into the centre circle and put it into the enamel kiln.

 When I took it out and it cooled, I made a copper wire flower shape, based on the centre of the pink flower, and put it onto the enamel, then put it back into the kiln to melt the enamel again, so the wire would sink into it and would hold  it firmly. I then used white enamel powder around the wire part, so a little bit of the yellow was still visible through it.

 I wanted to also colour the outer grooves, but not to cover up the whole of the surface, because I wanted it to have the mix of old metal with new enamel. I used white and red enamel because there was no pink, and think it has worked well. I have not used enamel before this, and think my outcome is very successful in showing the mix of old with new, and also making a new object from an old one. This could be used as a decorative object on its own, or could be made into a brooch or necklace.

I then tried to make something from a can base that didn't include using any new materials, so I decided to use some paper clips and a drawing pin, to add to the can as decoration. I think this worked well because all of the materials are shiny metal, and are designed to be functional not decorative so using them in this way is interesting. I have bent the paper clips so they look like the flower petals, and also used shears to cut the edge into petal shapes.

New Project: Old to New

For my new project, I wanted to carry on the ideas I was working on towards the end of my trace elements: using pottery shards, and making them into new things, and also mending broken items using new  materials and methods.
I have chosen the title 'Old to New' for my new project, focussing on making new objects and small items from old, recycled or reclaimed materials. As a starting point I am planning to look at the shapes, patterns and colours in flowers and leaves to influence my making.
My main reasons for choosing this project theme is based on research I have been doing for my essay, and the artists I have been looking at all use reclaimed materials and small remnants of pieces, left over from something else. I want to bring this into my own project.

Needle felting

 Needle felting uses barbed needles to tangle the wool fibres together, to make a firmer, more sturdy fabric. I  used this method to make the basic shape, then used a smaller needle to put detail on top in a contrasting colour. I used my pottery shards to work from, so I was using the felting as a method of observational drawing.

I like this method, and felt can be shaped to make sculptures or vessels, so I think it is a very useful material to use in mixed media works or on its own, as it is so versatile.

Another Vessel

For my next vessel, I wanted it to be mixed media, rather than just metal. I tried to keep with the idea of repairing something, so before I could do that, I had to break something. That 'something' ended up being the pottery bowl I made in the exploratory stage. I decided to drop it onto my kitchen floor, and this broke it into quite large shards. It would have been possible to carefully glue the pieces all together again, without much difficulty, but I wanted to make the repairs more obvious than that, I wanted to use parts that didn't originally come from the pot.

I decided to cast two of the smaller shards in pewter, and used small strips of masking tape to stick two of the larger pottery pieces together. I then only had one other piece, which I decided to make out of felt, because felt is something nobody would use for a vessel, something that would make the bowl useless, so it now has no function except decoration. I used wire to hold the felt piece to the rest of the bowl, and glue to hold in the metal pieces.

For the felt piece, I used merino tops, and needle felted them to make it the same shape as the gap in the bowl. I sewed a piece of wire across the piece so It would keep its curved shape.

The glue was quite difficult to control, and came out of the joins, but instead of taking it off the surface, I decided to leave it, to make it very obvious that this object had been changed, broken and repaired.