Melissa's Melting Pot

I have been a member of the Enamellers guild for a few years now and have only been to one meeting so far... So I thought this year that should change, and I signed up for the workshop/meeting last weekend with Ruth Ball. We experimented with surface design and how to create a matte finish on enamelled pieces. It was really interesting, that is when I finally found the English bridge workshop (the place it was  held at).  Ruth was an amazing teacher and really very modest about her ability, here are some photos of her stuff... Beautiful! You can check out her website at: www.ruthballenameldesign.com  Here are some examples of the work produced... And these are my four pendants! I also found that being in a place that had lots of experts who had been enamelling for years was very inspiring and I had loads of inspiration and ideas through talking to the other members of the guild. I will definitely be attending the next meeting! The moral of this story is to try new things ...

We have now moved into 'the build'... Think a name change is in order! It's no longer half done and is finally coming together :) we have the bedroom all finished now but there is a little left to do in the downstairs so just waiting on the builders to come and finish up.  Here are some photos of the development of it!  Before it all... Mum and Michael outside. The inside... Plastered and painted. Downstairs.. Flooring in Carpet in:  Finished photos will be up soonish :) 

Today we made fossils, and it was great fun! This week has been focused on dinosaurs so we used the toy dinosaurs to make marks in the clay.  We then rolled out snakes of clay and flattened them to create walls.  I mixed up plaster of Paris with water to a gloopy consistency so I could spoon it out into the molds. Then I filled the molds we had made with the mixture and left to set.  When set, we carefully peeled the walls away and saw the 'fossils' we had created. The design was raised as the negative space we had taken away through pressing dinosaurs into the clay was filled in.  Here are a few examples of our fossils.