Saturday, July 30, 2011

Flower-Baubles

Designed to artsy up center pieces, vases, pots, plants ...  They are a Deco-Bauble on a steel rod.  We paint the steel rod an avocado green, but we/you could paint the rod any color to go with your arrangements.  The two-toned flower baubles are made of Walnut & Maple wood, the dyed ones are Poplar wood.  The glass beads add a vibrant sparkle to your home or office.  Pricing ranges from $55.00 - 75.00, depending on the elaborate bead work.  The flower-baubles are 6-10" high and 4-5"wide, overall 2' with the rod.


$55.00
$55.00


$75.00







Friday, July 29, 2011

Gallery Night in the Third Ward

We had an inspirational evening in the Third Ward of Milwaukee walking through many Artists Galleries. The artist Reginald Baylor had the most original works - paintings & mixed media(shredded fabrics, leather....). His work can be seen at reginaldbaylor.com although in person the work are very large scale. WOW
A good crowd of people were touring the galleries, a beautiful night in Milwaukee.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Deco-Baubles

Every new idea I get for a new product, seems to come from trying to find a way to get rid of scrap wood.
Take Deco-Baubles for example, they came about because of boxes of six inch pieces of wood that were consuming all the available storage space in and around my shop. I thought I could burn it up in campfires during the summer up north, but I soon found out that nobody can have that many campfires - unless you are a borderline Pyromaniac, so I dug out an old wood lathe I had in the basement and went to work, learning how to turn wood.

In the beginning Inge was not impressed with my skills at the lathe and neither was I for that matter - besides that, I had no idea what to do with all these little wood turned weird shaped "baubles" I was making anyway.  So I threw them in a box and put that idea aside.

Then a call from the Princess Potosa gallery set the ball in motion.  They were looking for some Christmas type items from their artists, Bingo!  A use for those little wood turned baubles that were gathering dust in the shop.
Our first attempts were pretty boring, so we dyed the wood and added a few beads, nothing to write home about.
The more we made the more inspired we got - Inge loves decorating our house with them, soon she was decorating family and friends houses with them.  She finds all kinds of necklaces on clearance racks and uses them as the chain to hang the Deco-Baubles from the ceiling.  She also uses small shepard's hooks for potted plants to liven up home decor.

A New Day

A beautiful day is starting, a little rain, lightning and wonderful cool temps.
I have a custom order for a Butterfly End Table to start working on today, so I will be planing and milling Maple and Walnut lumber for the top.  It is always exciting to mill rough lumber, especially figured wood like Curly Maple.  The wood goes into the planer all rough and nasty on one end and hopefully comes out the other end smooth and showing all sorts of beautiful figuring.  So, lets get to it.....