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Garden decorations, flower balls

7 June 2020 by Monica Björk

I got a new idea to make latex moulds to cast concrete flower balls. They hopefully will look fantastic as garden decorations. I hope they will turn out great, and if so, I will make more of them!

I have bought a bunch of resin flatback flowers to use for this. I also bought some big styrofoam balls in different sizes and some modelling clay (that does not dry). The biggest ball is 14 cm in diameter. I cut a bit off from the styrofoam balls to have a flat bottom for my balls to stand on. Then I put on a thin layer of clay and then gently pressed the flowers into the clay. I filled the gaps between the flowers with small half round pearl beads.

This is the first ball I’m working on. I will make more of them (different designs) if this turn out as good as I think it will do.

Now the long process starts to make the latex mould. The ball has to be covered with liquid latex in several layers. I can put on two layers a day. It will take about two weeks to finish. It is very important to remove all trapped bubbles when putting the latex on. I use a straw to blow the bubbles away. Here I have just put on the third layer of latex.

I really long to cast this flower ball!

/Monica

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Waiting for warmer weather

19 May 2020 by Monica Björk

This spring has been so fricking cold! We have had snow showers each and every day.

Some days ago I spent the whole day cleaning the pond so I could start the pumps to get the water and the fountain running. The water is freezing cold and the last ice melted about a week ago. It’s a struggle each spring to fix the pond but this year I had bought a special vacuum cleaner for it. It took just as long to clean the pond but it wasn’t as back breaking as it usually is. Now I’m prepared for summer!

I also put down my pond monster. My hands hurt from the cold water although it just took a minute to get him there! Isn’t he cute? Everyone needs a monster in their pond! 😉

The first spring flowers

There is not much greenery yet but we have some early spring flowers that are blooming. I fear that many perennials have died this winter because we have had so much snow alternated with thaw so there has been a lot of ice this winter. We will see!

/Monica

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More ducks!

9 May 2020 by Monica Björk

Now I have painted all the small ducks. They are so cute! These are the last ones:

The work on the big duck mold is progressing. I have finished the latex mold and have made a support for it using plaster bandage. I have made it in two halves to make it easy to remove it. On the first half I made a small ridge about 10 mm in from the edge so the other half gets good support. When it had hardened I trimmed it with my dremel so it looks nice.

When the two halves was finished I needed something to keep them together when casting. I used a strap for this but needed something more to hold it in the right position. I filled a small plastic jar with plaster and put the head down in it. I had put a thin plastic film on the head so it didn’t got stuck in the plaster.

Now I was ready to try it out! The mold and the support worked very well. It was easy to cast and everything went well. When I removed the mold, I saw that the beak was a little too thick in the upper part because I hadn’t put in a support for the beak in the two halves.

Now I have fixed this and I hope the next big duck will be perfect!

/Monica

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I’m back again!

29 April 2020 by Monica Björk

After a very long break from writing here, I’m back again! I hope to continue with regular updates from now on. I recently lost my job, (not because of the Corona pandemic), and therefore I have plenty of time to do my hobbies.

I have been quite busy with making moulds for garden decorations. My funniest project is to make small ducks to have around my pond. It will look silly and so nice! I have made latex moulds on different rubber ducks and now I have cast more than 100 small ducks to put in the garden.

I’m still working on a bigger duck mould and hopefully it will be ready for casting within a week or so.

To paint all the ducks is very painful for my shoulders so I can only paint about 15 ducks a day. I use Inka Gold when painting and it looks so good!

/Monica

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I’m sorry for the lack of updates

13 April 2019 by Monica Björk

It has been more than a year since my last update! I’m quite embarrassed over this. I hope you can forgive me! I really have no excuse other than that I have been lacking inspiration to write something.

I’m still doing a lot of stuff but I have not made any new cutting designs. Right now, I spend most of my time making diamond paintings. They are so fun to make but I think I soon have to stop because I have too many of them, I just don’t have enough walls to hang them on. This is the one I’m working on right now:

And here are some of my finished ones:

Last winter we got a record amount of snow, the total snowfall was more than three meters (10 ft). I can say that I was deadly tired of shovelling snow. Last summer was the warmest summer ever. To work in the garden was a pain, and all the concreting I wanted to do was not an option. However, I did read a lots of books, sitting in the shadow. We also had lots of wildfires. This winter we got more snow than last winter. I wonder how this summer will be…

The snow is thawing rapidly now. Today I shovelled a path to the greenhouse. My plan is to move out my seedlings during next weekend. The daylight is back and I feel that the energy to do things returns.

/Monica

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