A Necessary Detour

It's been an incredibly busy first few weeks of summer  on the farm. We're building a small addition onto our cottage and that has consumed most of our free time. Lot's of racket from power tools, debris, and hustle going on around here.  And it's been raining much of the time.  Let your imagination go with that one. 

I know this may seem odd, but when things get a little hectic, I find that one of the ways I cope is to bust out some purely fun creative time.  If I'm painting or making hypertufa pots, worries about whether or not we  made the right decision on the roof pitch or window placement are assuaged. I easily get hung up on stuff like that, enough so that I often impede progress. A little creative detour and I'm ready to scale the bigger stuff. But right now....

This is what came of my quest for balance.

Do you have a stash of rugged materials waiting to be transformed into something wonderful? Stuff to make, well, stuff with? A shingle, rusty plumbers tape, an old hinge and a little paint. I've been wanting to do this for a while, I guess a little stress pays off from time to time.

And I've always dreamed of owning a kiln and a potter's wheel since the first day I sunk my hands into a slab of cool damp clay in highschool pottery class. Unfortunately a pottery studio hasn't materialized in my life. But hypetufa is a great substitution for the frugally minded ceramic artist wanna be. You might remember my casting leaves with hypertufa in an earlier post. Here, I used a thrifted platter as a mold for this piece.  I used hot glue to draw a face on the bottom of the platter before casting. 


Soon, we'll be deciding flooring, lighting, etc in the next few weeks. And as I much as I love the process, there will be for certain, a few necessary detours along the way.


Oh, but detours are often where one finds inspiration. Here's a bit of what inspired me along the way:

• Cozy Homemaking- Part scientist, part artist, full awesome! I would love, LOVE to have indigo dyed arms up to my elbows with Sonia, in France!! I can dream can't I?
• The Garden Betty- The self professing diary of a Dirty Girl. Linda mountain climbs, surfs and grows super whamma jamma tomatoes! Naturally.
• Orangette- Molly is  a writer and owner with her husband of a restaurant called Delancey, but its her words, and sincere love of home cooking that keeps me coming back for more. 

*~Whatever you are doing, or wherever you are going, may it be a summertime to remember.~*

Hypertufa Cast Leaves

I've said it before and I'll say it again. NASTURTIUMS!

I so love them. They are prolific, sunny, edible, a living mulch. And I couldn't live one summer without them!

So I immortalized my love for them by casting a few of their lovely leaves in hypertufa. Scroll through my step by step photos below for a jump on the how to.

Gather your leaves and cover your work area with plastic. I would avoid working in direct sunlight so your cast leaves don't cure too quickly and possibly crack. mound damp sand in to the general size of your leaves and placed a leaf on each mound, bottom side up.

With a brush paint your leaves with oil. I used recycled machine oil but vegetable oil or even spray cooking oil works fine. The oil behaves like a resist so your casting medium releases.

Mix up equal amounts of fine milled peat moss, perlite, and Portland cement. I used a plastic 2lb. coffee container for measuring. You know, I completely forgot the perlite in my recipe but was satisfied how they turned out anyway. Love it when that happens!

I added enough water to make it the consistency of thick oatmeal. I added a little more to the batch as I was molding the leaves as the mixture tended to dry out a little as I worked on the leaves.

If you want to hang your finished creations you'll need to insert a sturdy wire into the mixture while soft placing it near the stem. Small paper cups will keep them upright while curing.

2 to 3 days later un-mold your leaf and etch the imprinted veins a little more for definition if you feel it needs it. The edge of a putty knife works but I had a small pointed scribe handy and thought it worked great.

You can leave them natural or paint them like I did for weather durability. I chose a teal colored semi gloss exterior latex for the bottom coat. I thinned the paint with water so it wouldn't hide the details. It dried fairly quickly and sealed the leaf.

Next I added touches of gold. I used an acrylic craft paint.

To give my leaves a weathered look I finished with a top coat of black semi gloss exterior latex thinned with water. I brushed it on and then came back with a wet soft cloth and wiped them until I revealed enough of the teal and gold to my liking.

There you have it! Love immortalized.