Castle Paper-Cut Tin

Ive been experimenting with making 3-D paper-cut interiors for my tins. For a while I've had a really pretty Czech cigarette tin with an image of a princess on the front (and the image coming through on the inside of the lid).

I also found a black and white picture of a castle by Aubrey Beardsley which I thought would work really well with the monochrome image on the back of the lid and with the theme of the tin. The image is an illustration from an edition of Le Morte d'Arthur. I printed several copies onto card and tried to cut them in layers to give the 3-D effect. I used foam pads to separate the layers but the end result wasn't quite what I was looking for.

 I'm going to try again with a different sized tin. I sent for a knight in shining armour to put in the foreground. Again not a huge success. He was too big and arrived without his horse! I hadn't realised that when the sellers said the figure came without a mount that meant the horse wasn't included!

William Blake Tin

I used my new fonts on the inside of a new tin. This is a rather romantic tin inspired by St Valentine's Day and by an etching made by William Blake. I used a copyright free image for the interior and altered the colours to make the two sides of the tin tone in with each other.

I wasn't sure whether to have the couple facing towards the moon or facing outwards. I took advice from Nicky and my daughter Katie and here is the result! I'm planning a variation with two parents and a small child and the text: 'if you wanted the moon we would give it to you'. This was an easy tin to make: Nicky made the wooden insert which I wrapped in my printed paper. The exterior doesn't really match - but, as one of many 'Three Nuns' tins I have, it was cheap! It's Nicky's favourite tin so far!

Finding New Fonts

I wanted to find some new fonts that would add to the vintage feel of my tin artwork. Not being a very adept IT person it took me an hour or so to work out how to add fonts to my Pages menu. Some font additions can be cut and actually pasted onto images. I also want to play with combining images and font online. 

I found a wide range of fonts on this site including Mom's Typewriter which I particularly liked

Here is a picture I've been saving for a tin, wall plaque or as a basis for a lino-cut with the added font and my caption.

Here is another use of the font. This time with an image I found online and gave a pen and ink effect using an art filter.

The actual process of incorporating the new fonts onto my Pages font list took a little thought and effort. I used this advice. An afternoon has just vanished whilst I've been fiddling with all this technology. Still - it's pretty murky outside and Nicky is down in the workroom creating another lovely little wooden animal so it was a good time for time-wasting!

Work in Progress: Puncture Kit Tins

One of my next projects is to create a little diorama or collage using old puncture kit tins. I'm assembling some ideas but need to seek out a few lines from a poem about cycling. I can't remember the poem I originally found!

If it's possible, I'd like to make a collage using the contents of the tins in a little display alongside the tin diorama. I've already got some tiny cyclists to put inside the tins! One figure is mending a puncture so it's particularly fitting!

Not sure though if everything will stick on in such a way as to allow the hanging of the collage - and the opening of the tins!

Back to Bowie

After a long time away from the workroom I finally finished my 'Ashes to Ashes' David Bowie tin. Nicky helped me to finish it by customising the colours of the spaceman, Bowie figure and the mother figure (though we left her outfit red to co-ordinate with the artwork). I like the match between the spaceman image on the sweet tin and the space theme of the inside lid. I used quotations from the song on each side of the tin. 

The beach image started out as a holiday pic from our sailing holiday in Greece (I was sitting on the beach but I cropped myself out).  I played around with various filters to try to give an effect similar to the odd colouring on the Ashes to Ashes video.

Tusky (Rhubarb) Gin

I've been away from my blog for a while for family reasons.
With the Autumn upon us, Nicky and I decided to make use of the fruits of the garden (well not quite our garden). When I was a child I lived near rhubarb fields and we loved to eat the rhubarb - or 'tusky' as we called it then - raw, dipped into bags of sugar. More recently we've enjoyed a rhubarb gin cocktail at a wine bar in the Rhubarb Triangle town of Rothwell (where I lived from 11 to 18). We enjoyed it so much we decided to have a go at making some ourselves.

We used rhubarb kindly donated by our neighbours: the only other ingredients were a bottle of gin, some sugar and lots of patience.

We chopped and washed the rhubarb and put it in a couple of kilner jars with the sugar! Full recipe link here We shook the jars - lots of frosty looking rhubarb. After a night resting on the Raeburn the sugar had all dissolved into a gloopy syrup!

The next step was simply to add the gin. And wait!

And wait. And wait. About four weeks later the gin was ready to drink. It tastes absolutely delicious on its own - more like a liquor. Fever-Tree Aromatic Tonic also works well with it. We're saving the rest for Christmas!

Tins: Another Stourton Tin

I've had a long break from this blog - mainly because of another break - a broken hip! I had a fall in January and I ended up having to have a full hip replacement. The recovery process takes a while and it is only recently that I've felt confident enough to head back down the cellar stairs to our lovely below-ground workshop.

Just before my accident I made another Stourton tin. Once again I used a Pontefract Cakes tin and pasted a map of Stourton around the insert and on the back of the tin. This picture on the insert this time is a photograph of me and my sister Ann in our front street in Stourton. I'm the baby in the pram and Ann is in the toy car.

The railway figures in the tin were self-assembly and self-paint. I found the pram almost impossible to assemble - so fiddly! Nicky proved much better at this than me and assembled and painted everything. I gave the tin to Ann as a gift. I hope she liked it!

Still got a few tins halfway completed - next one to finish is my Bowie 'Ashes to Ashes' tin. Watch this space.