GOODNESS! I've seemingly just completely forgotten about my blog! Remember that time I said I would update with pictures of things? Hah me too finally! Here's a round up of everything I can remember making in the past year-ish time frame...

So first off, from my last post, I mentioned how my wife and I didn't have rings when we eloped. We made sure to fix that the second time around when we had our ceremony and party with friends and family! I made my wife's ring and she made mine! One of her college friends has a whole metal working shop in her house and we gratefully used her equipment. Oz and I each bought some silver wire from a jeweler in Philadelphia. Cut the wire to size and hammered it into a circle.

Then soldered the two ring ends together...

Ground off some imperfections and created a hammered finish...

And Ta-Da! All done! (I'm way over simplifying the process here, it took all day, we learned a lot, and had so much fun!)

Additionally, for the wedding, I bought a cheap little balsa wood box from Michael's Craft Store and made it look REAL good. Sanded it first, tinted the wood with green water color paint, used my favorite Tru-Oil for a finish, then made a styrofoam insert with black felt covering. BAM! So pretty.

Next up! The long awaited pictures of the "finished" electric violin.

 

 

This is why is say "finished" because I never got around to making a cover for the electronic part. Mostly, I got discouraged from the fact the bloodwood made this violin FAR too heavy to ever manage playing it.

Next! A friend gave me a ridiculously old, cheap, busted-up banjo. I revived it enough to make it playable, not the best sounding banjo around but pretty good for a 1970's Korean made instrument.

Had reglued the wooden back piece and refinished it.

Put on new tuners!

And a fancy fifth string tuner, which isn't the usual 1 to 1 ratio. Which makes tuning the string easier.

Also made two more clay bowls! They only recently got fired. I was trying to make them bigger... the one of the left was the first try and was no where near large enough. The one on the right was the second attempt and indeed is ever so slightly larger.

Then lastly, made a silk screen print of a card game symbol. Just for fun and something to do, to kick me back into a creative mode!