The old hen house

Well, what can I say? I hope you like these photos because I hurt myself taking them. Or to be more precise, I hurt myself as I got the idea to go back and fetch my camera so I could take a few pics. On my way back to the hen house, I slipped on a patch of ice and sleet in the grass. I ended up wet and with a small bruise o the hip that I landed on. The camera landed in the snow, which isn't a good thing, but it also cushioned the blow so the camera's fine. It could've been this all over again, but it wasn't. And no real damage on me either, just a little soreness here and there, mainly in the left arm.

The big irony is that when going down to the hen house the first time -- before getting the idea of opening the door -- I told Uggi to go slow as I had to be careful, what with having the wrong shoes on (the ones that are useless on ice as they just slip) and it still being icy and very wet on the north side where the barn keeps the ground from heating up. Guess I should be listening more to my own advice...

Every now and then I've shown pics of the old hen house -- from one angle or another -- but this is the first time the door's opened. Don't think anyone's been in there for ages, but Uggi was curious so I opened for him. As the name implies, it used to be a roost, but after giving up farming, the hens moved from here to the by then empty barn. So as long as I can remember this has just been an old building (or two, as you can see, half the house is a latter attachment with more modern steel roofing) used for storage.

And this is what it looks like inside:

Anyone want to clean those windows? That's decades of grime and spiderwebs.

 This is not the only broken old spade in there.

 If you wonder why there's a window inside the house, it's because we're in the extension: this used to be the outer wall. I didn't go into the older part of the building as there's not much light and it's mostly full of barbed wire. This part of the hen house is spacious in comparison.

 I think I can get some nice texture images from that wall.

 Doodles? Zentangles? No, an old mattress. As you can see below.

I also found the old sewing machine. The one you power with a foot pedal. There's a table for it too, but it's stored in the hayloft. I think I'll show some close-ups of the embellishments in another post.

Uhm, no, I have no idea why we have a plastic sign that says Malmö...

And that's it, the secret of the hen house. I left out the worst mess as I don't think anyone needs to see more clutter than they can find in their own cellars and attics. The thing with a farm that isn't used for farming is that you have a lot more places to stuff all your old, broken, unused and found things into. Fascinating places for kids, but of cause not always places we were allowed. Not that we always listened. Nowadays, though, I'm a grown up and can go where ever I want. And sometimes I do, even though it's not as exciting as it was in a child's eyes. It's more a hunt for useful things and good photo opportunities, not a treasure hunt, an adventure into the unknown, as it used to be. But it can still be fun.

And who knows -- one day one will find something that one need in there -- and feel good about saving it. Why throw away something -- on day it could come in handy!

Let's play "Guess what's hidden under the snow"

It's been a good, snowy and sunny day today so I managed to both get more photos and, together with my sis, make a snow cat (and a glass shard lantern, which is the lazy way of making an ice/snow lantern). No pics of any sort of cats today though.  Instead I'm showing this odd thing. Can you guess what is?

How about if I give you another view of it?

Did that make it too easy? I've got a second pic of the same view if you need a few more seconds to think about it.

I'm going to assume you spotted what it is now.

Yes, it's a...

...rusty old bike.

It's been out there for ages (and just to make it clear, by "out there" I mean on the old scrap heap we have on our farm, just like all farmers used to have and where they'd just chuck old farming machines, milk cans, bricks, broken china or whatever else lost its value). Today I walked around the old hen house and found it like this. I really liked how the snow had gathered on the spokes, no in a straight line, but in waves. The snow most likely began to thraw and starting to slide of the spokes. Then it got colder and the snow stuck in "mid-slide" so to speak.

Random snow pics

It's been snowing again today. Lately, the temperatures have been going up and down, both sinking below and soaring about that magic line that's zero degrees. That's meant days with snow followed by days with rain followed by days with sleet followed by days with a tad more snow. Well, you get it. And today was one of the colder days when it's been more white than wet -- meaning I got the camera out. Haven't uploaded or edited all the pics yet so I just picked a couple of random photos for this impromptu post.

Patina on patina

Do you remember this brass stamping that I showed back in August when experimenting with patinating and vinegar etching some brass? I wasn't that fond of it, even after having polished it a bit and added some colour (mostly alcohol inks and then a few dabs of acrylic paint on that).

Well, at the end of February -- as you can read here -- I finally got around to trying out that peanut oil patina I'd wanted to test for ages. Already then I thought about adding some torched oil patina to the stamping as it was in my mind already ruined so what not just keep playing around with it. For a couple of different reasons it didn't happen. I had brushed on some oil (rapeseed, not peanut), but then had to let it just sit there.

Today, I picked up the stamping on the cluttered worktable and torched it. It was like being back in chemistry class as the copper salts from what remained of the original verdigris patina coloured the flame green (it's the only laboration I remember from chemistry, burning various metal salts, which made the flames turn a rainbow of colours).

The result was a colourful heat patina on a very tortured piece of brass. You can have a lot of fun with a simple little butane torch (or in my case a Dremel Versatip, a kind of "multi heat tool").

If you wonder about the background on which the lady stamping is sitting, it's a rusty old steel garbage can belonging to my dad, who use it to burn rubbish. The white is actually a slab of paint from when it was used as table leg when he painted whatever it was he had made then (probably the revamped hammock swing). It has endured heat as well as some really tough weather as it sits outdoors around the year. Which means that the lid has a lovely rusty patina nowadays.

PS! I'm not a very active blogger at the moment. Nor an active anything else (still haven't gotten through the suddenly spring blog hop and don't respond much on blog comments, I fear). I hope to catch up a bit more this week -- after having done my work as a jewellery design contest judge, which is what I'm focusing on right now -- but I better not promise anything or I'll just feel stressed about not finishing what ever I promise in time. Just wanted to say I haven't forgotten anyone or anything like that. And I always read and appreciate blog comments even when it doesn't look like Ido.

Crackled and peeled paint *new photos added*

I've taken a little break from blog hopping and working on creations for my next two hops as it's been such a sunny and warm day today. For those of you that don't know me that means I was outdoors with my camera. Tailed by three kittens, which meant I couldn't leave the garden (the kitties are not allowed on the road). Which isn't as bad, not least considering we have a big garden, partially overgrown and left to its own. But sorry to disappoint you: no pics today. Apart from the last handful I took, which were not of changing leaves but of old paint.

The first photo, at the top, is of the wooden window frame around the barn window. The second one is of the metal windowsill. It's really, really close up, which is why the paint on the frame almost look like bark. Seen from a slight distance, the crackling is much more subtle. Notice how the crackling is finer the closer to the edge it gets.

The crackle on the sill is so much finer (you can see a bit of the frame in the shadow under it if you look closely). If the frame is like bark, then this is more like the lichen you can find on trees.

I want to do some pendants with crackled paint so this was unusually inspiring. I see peeling and cracked paint every day, but today it made me think more about how I want to work with the crackled paint techniques. I've got some crackle medium, the kind you paint over -- bought before I hear of this technique -- but I'm also thinking about getting Distress Crackle Paint and Lefranc & Bourgeois' transparent crackle varnish (and ageing varnish for the right patinated effect).

Also took a few shots of the barn wall with its old peeling paint, but I'm afraid they came out very blurry...

***

And because they were blurred, I thought I'd take a couple of new one. Of cause, I ended up taking a few more photos than planned. So that means more old paint for you.

And then there's the old barn door:

The other window on the same side of the barn (the long side facing east):

The red is paint from the wall. Someone was a bit careless when painting it, it would seem (window frames not painted at the same time). There's also rust stains where the paint covers a nail.

I've actually got a pic of the whole window too. Not the one those last three pics are from, but the one the pics at the top is from:

It probably needs a new coat of paint, or what do you think? Luckily, it's on the back so most people don't see this side. On the other side, facing the yard, there's only wood panelling for perhaps half a meter under the roof. The rest of the wall is concrete.

But let's return to the windows one last time. What side a window is on can make a huge difference. And it's the same for other parts of the house as well: the bargeboard on the short end of our outbuilding facing west is much more worn than the one facing east as weather and wind are tougher on that side. Anyway, here's a barn window that faces north:

Not as crackled and worn, but here in the shadow it's a easier for the algae to attach itself to the walls and windows.

***

As usual you can click on the photos to enlarge them.

Unless I have too much to do, I'll upload some of the foliage photos next week. For those of you not interested in close-ups of old paint (I can probably find more of those in my albums too, perhaps there might even be some old pics somewhere in this blog).

Rusted brass

I had a productive computer-free day yesterday. Not just crocheting all Saturday long, but also had time to test my (relatively) new "rusting paint". It's a acrylic-based paint with real steel particles and when painted onto a surface and sprayed with Rapid Rust, it begins to do just that. Rust. It's not a faux patina, it's real rust.

Above is my first test on a brass ox stamping. I painted it with the steel paint and then wiped it off the reliefed parts. The same way you make a painted "oxidization". When it had dried a bit I sprayed the rusting liquid on it and waited a bit for the rusting to begin. The process was then stopped by applying a sealant.

Below is a comparison between an untreated and a rusted version of the stamping. I bit harsh in the colours, at least on my screen, but I hope the photo is not too bad. Some probably prefer the oxidized look of the original stamping while others like me hopefully like the rusted version.

Gears, sprockets and cogs

One thing I like about this latest fascination with steampunk is that the bead shops (and hobby shops) have begun to sell all sorts of cogs. From watch movements to imitation spoked gears. While using cogs and watch parts might be considered a cliché by the "true" steampunks that just see this mainstream fad as people "jumping on the bandwagon", I love because it's become so much easier to find pretty cog-shaped components for my jewellery. I like steampunk -- I love cogs.
One thing true steampunks dislike is the use of watch parts or cogs as single elements, not actually part of a mechanism. While I could argue that jewellery making is all about using parts in ways not originally designed for, I won't. I'll just tell you why I personally don't mind these "scattered" and lonely parts.

I grew up in the countryside. I still live in the countryside. Like all farms that's been in the family for some time (in our case, my grandfather bought our farm around 1900), you can find a slightly forgotten corner outdoors where the old machines were placed when they were no longer of any use in the farm work. When I grew up, going for treasure hunts there was one of the best things we knew. We had to climb over some wood and then fight our way through bushes and weed until we got to the good stuff. There, with the big ash trees towering over this old and forgotten place, we would pull out all sorts of things: porcelain shards, old glass bottles, wire -- but most of all the rusty remnants of all things discarded decades ago. As there were machines it of cause also included some heavy cast cogs.


So there you have it, really, the reason why I love cogs even though I mostly make more or less romantic jewellery inspired by nature. The same nature that inspired me cotained these treasures. And that is also the reason why I love rust. It's pure nostalgia.

Watch parts was "just" something I wanted to get as the size is more useful in jewellery that the large cogs I'm used to. But if I have to be honest, I do prefer cog-shaped stampings as they look more like those cogs we retrieved for our "archeological expeditions" as kids.


I think the type of "cogs" you see above are nice too even though they look more like toothed washers (known as tooth lock washer or star washer) to me... But I have seen something similar, with many more teeth, in a watch movement actually. Still looks like washers to me, though: you can tell I grew up with a dad who had a workshop filled with washers and other types of hardware rather than watches.


If I had to analyze my fondness for cogs -- which really just gained momentum as source of inspiration since I first heard of steampunk some years back and saw people using cogs as design elements -- even further they have a shape that attracts me. Not just are they shapes I remember for such different things in my childhood as treasure hunts and cartoons (Donald Duck has a way of getting stuck in big gears and watch parts, not unlike Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times). Not only do they make me think of old-fashioned machines and "the good old days", past times always being a great source of inspiration. Not just are they often made in one of my favourite metals, brass. Look at the little watch gear with four spokes that I showed in the beginning of this post. That is more or less the same shape as a bronze age sun wheel/sun cross -- just compare my cogs and gears with these bronze age pendants. Cogs are like the modern, industrialized version of a sun symbol.

While I and probably most other people don't consciously find cogs and gears pretty because they look like the archetypical sun symbol -- nor were they designed to look like that -- I think there might be something of an underlying positive feeling about the shape that can attract people to it. It's a shape that can symbolize industrialism, but when it's made of brass people can be nostalgic and associate it with old times rather than modern industry. The prongs (and spokes if it has any of those) on the cogs also makes a simple but interesting shape: something more is happening than if it were just a plain circle or washer. The design is basically the same, but can vary from the most simple to something very ornate: there's something for everyone, regardless of what styles we like.


BTW, that enamelled spoked gear (by C-Koop Beads) you can see two of the pics above is destined to become a part of a flower. An echo of the nature-meets-culture that a rusted cog enveloped in weeds is -- inspired by the treasure hunts -- and also a way to show that the cog shape can be so much more than just a gear when used in jewellery.