Yes I've been getting quite a few orders for roses this week and am developing quite a range of different sizes and colours. This particular rose is very different from all the others and maybe one of my best so far. This rose has a set of four petals not three like all my others, the commission was a painted rose with stand and two leaves. Here are some pictures of the processes to the finished result.
I really love the finished result of this rose not only is it hand made by me but hand painted too. The cross between the reds, black and shininess of steel really stands out and is not to over powering. I think I need a photo of all my roses together while I still have most of them.
What do you all think?.....
I don't normally take on weird commissions but with this one I made an exception for. A friend of friend approached me with the idea he had for a cosplay outfit of the character Pyramid head from the film silent hill. The main task to this outfit is the mask which is a big pyramid (hence the name Pyramid head) First we built the frame and cut out the plates that would be welded to the frame from the inside. Because the mask had to look quite rustic I used the grinder and other tools to age it slightly. After aging it, we drilled about 60 holes in each side of the face, making the holes around the eyes wider for more sight. I quite like the finished result it certainly looks the part and I look forward to seeing the mask with the whole outfit in use.
Over the past three, four months..... Maybe longer I was in taking to create a paschal candle stand as a memorial in Newnham church. I was approached by the vicar and the interregnum to design a Paschal Candle stand and quote "It would be great to have something new and fresh in the church" There wasn't much metalwork in the church anyway so I began designing a stand in my own aesthetics. I sent a couple of development drawing to the vicar who was to discuss them with the PCC and get some feedback if I had to make any changes. I never heard back, I didn't even know if the drawing were seen by the PCC or not. The next thing I heard was from the interregnum saying that the vicar was leaving the parish and I would have to go through him now. After weeks of not hear from him he contacted me giving me a steep deadline for a professional drawing of the stand that had to be in his hands within two days ready for a meeting with the PCC two days after that. I finished the drawing after spending a whole day on it and sent it away on time, This was the finished result.
Two days after the meeting took place I finally heard back from the interregnum who told me that they had already seen the drawings previously from the vicar and had rejected the design and also wanted to drop the whole idea of a new paschal candle stand. They had apparently said that it would not fit in with the rest of the metalwork of the church. So therefore it was unnecessary for the professional drawing to have been sent. I feel it out of respect that they should have contacted me saying they had rejected the design instead of not telling anyone to inform me of their decision. I feel very disrespected by the Newnham parish and will be getting in contact with the bishop and archdeacon to settle this matter. What do you think of the design?
This update is of the more recent things I've been up to over the past couple of weeks. I really wanted to improve the design of the small candle stands I'd made in the past. I came up with a very simple design that worked very well in a set of three. This design has grown on me a lot and am thinking of developing the design in to some larger candle stands in the future.
As I haven't had as much work on as last month I spent the month planning to do a small advertising stunt. I built up a small stock of products in the spare time I had between jobs and would take them to the cheddar carboot sale. they have a flea market and other small business's there too and as it's only £9 a table the worse that could happen is I wouldn't sell anything. I took a few past products as well as some new ones and more business cards than I could possibly need. There were some interest and it was great to get some peoples positive reactions. I intend to go at the carboot at the end of each month taking more different products each time. Hopefully it will bring in not only some sales but further business too.
I must admit this is a very overdue update and I've been doing a lot in the past couple of months....
First of all I should probably show you all the finished result of those wall brackets I was making. Because of a design error one of the rivets couldn't be fully tightened so I went back to the drawing board and designed the mark 2 version. In this version the middle part of the design has been changed still breaking up the negative space but also allowing no trouble to rivet the steel together. This design worked perfectly and the finished results looked amazing!
After completing the brackets I moved back to looking at developing a range of products that would sell easily. I started playing around with a candle stick holder design I quickly drew up to see how it would look the overall design didn't come out to badly and can be developed further but one section that caught my eye. I tried to shape a grip to hold the candle but it didn't quite work out the way I wanted it to but it the way it formed was the similarly to how you'd form a forged rose. I had never forged a rose before, But then I thought as a blacksmith I really give it a go.
After doing a few days of research on making roses, it's interesting to see how different blacksmiths have different takes on how to make a rose. Most Blacksmiths I have noticed use all ready made petal templates which you have to buy from the USA at around about £8 a set for one rose. But after digging deeper I found a great video online on forging a rose with petal templates you can make yourself.
Using this to make my own templates for the petals I had a go at making my own rose and result came out a lot better than even I expected. After that I continued to make more and I find them quite pleasant to make and started to add leaves and forge stands for them. I think they make great gifts for loved ones and close friends.
