Tag: inspiration

Sea House Leadlights Interior, Roof; Scarlett

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Hello Sea House Leadlights office

The entrance to the Sea House Leadlights office is up a few stairs and across the deck to the left of the fireplace. A set of leaded glass doors opens into a snug but functional design studio.

Details: Terra cotta pot by Braxton Payne. Basswood deck and siding stained with Minwax Classic Gray. Pumpkins made from tissue paper and thread. Boulders sculpted from air dry clay painted with acrylic washes and sealed with ultra matte varnish. All succulents, yucca and other plants hand colored with W&N Promarkers. Many are prototypes; some available as kits at Modern Miniature Succulents + Sundries.) 

Desk and bulletin board

Beneath the half-loft a large tabletop desk has plenty of room to roll out plans and inspiration. Low built-in cabinets with black leather cushions provide more seating, storage and level surfaces for tea trays.

Details: The ceiling lights are 12V modified for warm white LEDs. Bulletin board is made from cork sheet framed with basswood stained to match. Sketchbooks made from my kits at MMS+S. Various meaningful artifacts including original leaded glass designs for other Sea House buildings, and a drawing of a cat by my then 4-year old daughter. Fèves, prized vintage Monopoly shoe, and an anodized earring from the 1980s.

The white-washed brick loft stores window frames, tools, Sea House memorabilia and miscellaneous treasure — as well as the switch (lift the black basket) and battery pack (hidden in a custom box) for the LED lights.

Details: Oh yeah, the baskets and boxes are also available as kits at MMS+S.

A gazebo-style roof welcomes natural light. (I’ll detail more of that happy construction in another post.) I made the 1:144 scale basswood model of the source kit for the original Sea House Pavilion, built some years ago. The Egyptian cat is a porcelain fève. Best of all is the vibrant painting by Jim Tracey that commands the studio — also another post.

Finally, of course, Scarlett. Here she has somehow managed to fluidly infiltrate an impossibly small entrance to the Sea House Sea Rise Pavilion loft (my ongoing remodel of the original 2013 build.) I swear she does these things just to remind me she can.

Oh, how she makes me laugh.

Sea House Leadlights Back Wall; No

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Part of the back wall of the Sea House Leadlights design studio

The back wall of the Sea House Leadlights design studio is about utility and remembrance. There’s a water spigot and old brick patio remnant for transplanting yucca and succulents. A faded advertising poster from nearby attractions survives on the wall, as does a longhorn cow skull from ranch days.

(Details: Brick wall grouted with tinted spackling paste and aged with muddy gray acrylic wash. Garden tools by Sir Thomas Thumb. Terra cotta pot by Braxton Payne. Basswood siding stained with Minwax Classic Gray. Foundation made from styrofoam, detailed here. Cow skull is resin, aged with Winsor & Newton Promarkers. Boulders sculpted from air dry clay painted in several acrylic washes and sealed with ultra matte varnish. All succulents, yucca and other plants hand colored with W&N Promarkers. Many are prototypes; some available as kits at Modern Miniature Succulents + Sundries.)

Who is this?

A vintage collection of gnomic being fèves populates the succulent understory. I tried to match their colors with the foliage, as they prefer to blend in. This guy is far more camouflaged in the final build, rest assured.

(Details: I find my fèves here.)

No

And, no. Never say never, and never ever compromise your instincts. This is my younger granddaughter Ruby, when somebody told her NO. She is two years old, approaching three. Know your truth.

Nope.

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I am not going to meet the HBS bloggers build deadline for September 26, 2016, and I am using cute kitten photos to distract from my mingled sense of failure, regret and self loathing.

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I *have* met all my work and all most of my volunteer deadlines.

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Feel free to judge me, but look at my belly first :)

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Though I will continue — and finish —  the build, I’m more than a bit scattered and distracted with other projects.

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Sweet dreams, best beloveds.

 

Observation Without Judg(e)ment

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I’ve been exploring a system of geometric patterns in both my professional and personal work for a little while now. This is the background, composed in Illustrator at one-quarter scale, for a new piece.

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After penciling in the three-inch grid on a 36 by 24-inch (61 x 94 cm) stretched canvas, I used a compass and straight edge to transfer the background design. Then it was a happy trip down old-school graphic design production memory lane as I wielded eighth-inch (3 mm) black crepe line tape to sketch out the shapes.

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I used shades of white, warm gray, brown and green acrylic for the underpainting.

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After adding a thin ivory wash and letting that dry, I pulled off the black tape. I’ll now add… other background stuff, and paints, and determine what final hue and value of gray to re-stripe (by brush) the outlines. Although I have some definite intentions, as usual, I’m making it up as I go along.

New Project, Poppy, Magnets

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Work is underway on a new mixed media piece, large (for me) at 24 by 36 inches (61 x 91 cm). These letters are about 2.5 inches tall (64 mm) and being cut from foamcore.

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Poppy the Fairy is being kept busy with her correspondence. These are two accordion books, meant for Ava and Aria to embellish, made from watercolor paper and simple punched shapes. That’s Poppy’s new sigil.

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… As well as Ava’s name rendered in triangles, and another tiny sketchbook for Lynnie (at proper 1:12 scale). Her’s from last week was, um, appropriated by her associates :)

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This week, Poppy made a two-inch square book to answer some of the girls’ questions: Can you do ballet, like me? Do you eat snacks? Tucked into the reply scroll are California poppy seed pods, because one of the things fairies do is gather seeds.

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Inside the book are quick ink and watercolor illustrations with text. Here are a few of the pages, listing some of the things fairies do:

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I can perhaps see a series, as my understanding of the fay way grows :)

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Maddie Lou spent the weekend with us as her parents enjoyed a night in the City to celebrate their anniversary. Here’s Maddie working on a surprising and spontaneous new deployment of her beloved magnetic blocks in the sun room.

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The final arrangement. Can you tell her favorite color is blue?

So awesome on so many levels :)

House guests, Poppy, Plastics

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We had house guests for the weekend. Here you see a SW Ep.VII Stormtrooper encounter a San Francisco summer, much to the delight of her more acclimated traveling companion. The reflection in the giant TV is our foggy Pacifica sunset, with powerlines.

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Poppy the Fairy was welcomed back from her nine-sleep vacay with drawings and correspondence from Ava and Aria (and Lynnie). In this drawing we see Ava and Aria and her parents, as well as the Fairy Mail box, with Poppy peeking out. I believe the green squiggles represent the recent landscaping, and a purple heart encircles them all.

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Poppy is collecting her/his thoughts for response. (Ava is convinced Poppy is a boy.)

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I signed the back of the plastics collage with these, um, economical but not un-fabulous  “unfinished wood letters & numbers” from Creatology™, which I think is a brand from the Michael’s crapstores.

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Some of the drillings and and nail insertions into the quarter-inch frame for the Plastic Litter Collage were regrettably less than expert, so I am embracing the concept of fuckedup recycled materials, and will further intentionally distress — but not too much! — the frame, as I sand and paint, sand and paint, sand and paint.

 

 

Plastic Litter Collage

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I added quarter- by half-inch pine to the back edge of the thin plywood base to stabilize it and add more surface area to attach the frame to. The plywood itself is salvaged from the crates I built to ship my builds when I moved three years ago :)

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After painting the inside frame pieces with two coats of semigloss latex, I cut the two-inch ply lengths to fit and glued them on the base, butting the corners. I used binder clips to hold the frame to the pine strips and a flexible strap corner clamp thingie to hold the frame square while the glue dried. A first coat of paint dries with Albie’s supervision. Tomorrow I’ll tap in tiny nails to secure it all, then fill the holes, sand and paint, sand and paint, sand and paint. And hopefully this weekend I’ll have collected more plastic to call it done.

Plastic Litter Collage

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Nearing completion on the plastic litter collage. I bought some two- by quarter-inch wide ply to build a frame, which I’ll paint white.

As more pieces were collected, I re-worked some of the areas. The blue-green section is pretty much filled in.

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Red could use a few more bits.

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And in the lower right corner, a bit of hipster humor and tree hugging :)

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Poppy Responds

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Poppy the Fairy received these prompt responses to her questions from Ava and Aria. The messages were folded in half, rolled into scrolls and tied with white cord.

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Poppy gave it some thought, and decided to combine favorite colors and letters and fun paper folding.

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Cutting the letters from watercolor paper.

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Protoype fold for Ava.

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Aria likes pink! And bacon too! (not pictured).

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Will of course make use of the scrap paper.

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Both sides painted, replies written, awaiting final assembly.

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When I went down to mail them, I found this appreciation in the Fairy Mail box.

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Awaiting delivery. One of the things Poppy mentioned in her replies is that she is going away for nine sleeps, coincidentally the length of time my neighbor, who takes walks with the girls, will be away on vacation. Hopefully I’ll have time for some landscaping and an oversized Fairy Mail bin before Poppy returns.

For the record, Poppy the Fairy does not know what poptarts or bacon are, likes both water and parks, her favorite color is orange, and she likes pink the most in flowers and the sky.

 

 

 

Foundations, Éclairs

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Attempting to integrate the show-through back wall brick arch, I built a few brick foundation ruins.

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After sealing the bricks, I mortared them with DAP CrackShot.

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They have been since grunged, weathered and eroded, and cast into the background.

More importantly, we celebrated my husband’s birthday with the question, What is your spirit animal éclair?

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We received so many heartfelt responses, mostly off the list of the available tiny animal figurines. Sloth, hyena, bunny… nope. Thus far, B has resonated with rhino and lion. I found the tiger encased on its side in delicious dark chocolate this morning; I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.