So December the 31st found me in the shed drawing and planning a big project.
These sketch book doodles are a plan for an enamelled concertina book,
it will be about the Oxford Natural History Museum and will be about 6ins x 9ins.
The plan is to make it in enamelled steel with screen printed transfers and drawing.
I can't wait to get started with the metal cutters.
I thought this would be a Christmas image that would make you all smile. Thanks to my children and their friends. 
A fairy exchange is no robbery. My friend Caroline( http://www.carolinemccatty.blogspot.com/) and I have been exchanging fairies at Christmas for some years now. The enamel fairy is my offering for this year. We have a theme which we choose in January, this year was faded fairy, in the past we have swapped scary fairy, furry fairy, famous fairy the list goes on. But I think this year we have both been so absorbed by the new processes we have been learning that the theme has taken a bit of a back seat.
I am thrilled to be the recipient of Caroline's first posted automaton, as usual I feel like I am getting the better end of the fairy deal (not complaining). It does look like we have both upped our game some what, goodness knows what we will do for next year.
The tree is now up and covered in my favourite vintage baubles.
With everything still to do for Christmas, I am well behind on the mince pie production, I can't seem to stop making these enamel brooches!!
I think it must be a displacement activity?
I am starting get into the festive mood and have begun to decorate here and there starting with the mantle piece.
When the sun shone through the windows this morning the decorations took on a life of their own throwing rainbows,
reflections and shadows.
Of course I have a great deal of spare time and Christmas pushes my creativity
into overdrive, so I can't help but experiment with bits of steel and enamel
and have made these broaches just to see if I could. The faces are enamelled using a stamp I have had for years, the legs swing...all very silly, but great fun to make.
A number of experimental enamelling techniques are gelling together
for me in these steel labels. Sgraffito drawing into wet enamel and screen printed transfers.
Etched copper fired with clear flux to achieve these warm red tones.
The transfers are from photographs I have taken at the Grant Zoological Museum at UCL and
the Oxford Natural History Museum. I am also starting to include lustre to get the iridescence found on beetles, but the photos do not show the twinkle.
Consequently I have a number of sketch book pages underway. I have posted
a few in various states.
Non of them are anywhere near complete, but it gives you some idea of how I build up these drawings.
A quick list of techniques used here, gum arabic transfer, photo copy/magazine and acrylic transfer, white acrylic paint drawing, indian ink washes, bleached Quink ink, label collage and a sneaky bit of pencil drawing.
