Woodworking Skills
The computer plays a big part in handmade Arts & Crafts these days whether the art or craft is created on one or not - bookkeeping, printing, finding places to sell your arts or crafts online are just a few - you can buy art supplies online too! Years ago, I used to do all that by hand as well as create the art and market it. I can design and print my woodworking edge patterns from the computer now or buy ready made pattern books. Sewing machines have computers in them to put the pattern in and create it with hand sewing or tracing the pattern on to sew it on the machine yourself.
I was a probably a teen-ager when I first discovered the books by Robert E. Howard about Conan The Barbarian … and later of course the wonderful art / posters by Frank Frazetta or Boris Vallejo … the comic books / magazines … the movies (I loved Red Sonja too!) and now you can buy figurines … trading cards … lunchboxes …. lots of Conan The Barbarian merchandise … oh my oh my … the world has changed since I first started reading Conan The Barbarian books from the local library bookmobile that visited our neighborhood regularly every week during the summer. I used to have a giant collection of the books and comic books and Conan Magazines … and I had a gloriously awesome poster too. When I moved to Texas, I sold my comic book / magazine collection … and a new friend down here was determined to have my poster!
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Back then, I hand cut freehand the poster special (all my other posters / wall art on boards that I created this exact way had all been bought by friends through the years that fell in love with them and paid me for my time and materials used in the creation - I had people bring me their posters to create wall art like this for them for their homes.
What I did:
1. a decorative cut around the poster’s outer edges with a craft knife
2. a decorative edge around a piece of thin plywood board with a jig saw (I didn’t have a scroll saw)
3. burnt the board with a torch, sanded the board with sandpaper - no I did not have a power sander either - I longed for one of those too! and then I would seal the wood with a coat of urethane before mounting the poster to it.
4. glued the poster on the pre-urethaned board - no - I did not use archival safe glue but it was to hold it in place for when I poured urethane over it.
5. glazed the poster / plywood board heavily with poly-urethane (that gave it an antique-y yellowish discoloration that really added to the effect of the Conan posters) to protect it from dust, rips from re-hanging or moving and to give me a good solid base to hang on the wall that was not overly heavy on the wall.
6. sand the edges where the urethane had pooled in drips and to remove any sharp edges
7. attach wall hangers on the back of the board
8. hang it on the wall
Note: There is always cool off for burning and drying time needed between steps!
I got a lot of compliments on all of them - many people wanted to know if I was scared of the jig-saw … no it was easy to use as long as I was careful and being careful comes naturally to me when using power tools! I couldn’t afford a scroll saw at the time or I would have had one! I longed for a scroll saw back then like most women yearn for trips to the beauty parlor! My husband at the time had a router so he would router the edges for me for bevels - I was not afraid of the router but it was easier to let him do it since he knew how to do it and I would have had to learn how to do it. That way I got to spend my time cutting posters, boards, burning boards (yes I used the torch to do the board burning so I got the amount of burn where I wanted it!), glue-ing and pouring urethane.
My ex-husband used to build foot locker type trunks - I did all the poster art, burning of the boards he used for the lids and/or the sides if requested and all the urethaning of everything - one year that was what everyone in the family got for Christmas! He also built custom picture frames so we had all kinds of tools in the garage.
The only reason I quit doing it was because we got a divorce and I no longer had a garage - I was living in an apt for years & years and it just is not safe to be doing that kind of stuff (in my opinion) in an apt - plus most apt neighbors do not want to hear that kind of noise next door or above or below them of cutting boards with a jigsaw! That would probably tend to freak them out a lot!
I hadn’t started painting yet back then or I would have tried paintings on boards and urethaned them - I have been thinking about doing some of these when I buy a house of my own later this year … I am thinking of getting a scroll saw, a router with a variety of router bits & a router table (though the Bosch Coltâ„¢ Variable-Speed Palm Router Kit looks REALLY interesting to me), lots of clamps in a variety of sizes & uses, and a good storage system container of some kind - haven’t looked into those yet. If I get back into doing woodworking with my paintings - I may have a viable product to take to craft fairs and to local shops that sell hand-made art … and of course there is always the Etsy market on-line too!
Trackback URI:
please leave your comment
log in