Remembering

Today is a very cold, grey, and gloomy day. Days like this always bring me down a lot. It is one of the reasons we are moving south to a much sunnier, and warmer, climate.

Anyway, while I was sitting here this morning I played some of my old favorites on YouTube and came across Peter Gabriel singing with Sinead O'connor, which then lead me to find one of my favorite songs by Sinead: "Nothing Compares to You".

This song is SO powerful and her voice is amazing. No matter how often I listen to this song, it still brings tears to my eyes. If you have ever lost someone you love it really hits home.

For some reason, most of the videos of her song on YouTube have been muted. I also have a video of her singing this live (also on YouTube).

Hope you enjoy this song today.

I'll be posting a bit later, the progress on my Steampunk Gourd that I wrote about in my last post.

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Gimme Steam (80s Flashback)

I've been so into listening to Peter Gabriel and watching his videos again. Boy, it's been awhile! I would love to meet the art director behind his videos someday, they are fabulous!

Anyway, on the subject of Steam...

Day 2 Steampunk gourd, originally uploaded by avision4.

I will be picking up where I left off on this gourd over the weekend. In my flickr album, you can see the progress shots up to this point here. After Sunday, I will post a couple more to show how much I got done this weekend.

Hope you enjoy the video as much as I do :)

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Progress of Steampunk Gourd, Day2

Day 2 Steampunk gourd, originally uploaded by avision4.

As you can see there is a lot of tedious, time-consuming work involved in gourd carving. Where it has been carved out, it has been sanded smooth by hand. Some of the gourd was carved with my dremmel and other, more intricate areas with my Xacto knife.

You can also see from this photo that I am still working on sanding and carving. :) There is quite a bit of carving, shaping, and sanding to do yet and I will be working on this the rest of tonight and part of the day tomorrow.

I Will post the next progress shots either tomorrow (Easter Day) or Monday.
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I have a couple of other gourd projects going on at the same time that are nearly completed and I hope to be posting them to my Etsy shop early next week.

There are quite a few rocks now too that have been prepped and are ready to be made into colorful fish. :)

All for now!

Have a wonderful Sunday and a Happy Easter to all!

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Steampunk and Gourds Tie the Knot!

New Vase, Latest Work in Progress, originally uploaded by avision4.

I am totally in love with the Steampunk trend these days. There is so much about it to love! The clothes, the jewelry, the art......the ART!

I have been working on a couple of things that follow the steampunk trend which involve gourds. This vase, for example, is one of my latest works in progress and stands about 8 inches tall.

After I finished the prep work I sketched my rough design onto the gourd shell using a B2 pencil, which is pictured above. Now that the design is in place, I've started carving out all of the negative space. This gourd's shell is pretty thick so I will be able to work at three different height levels for the gears and cogs.

I will be taking another couple of pictures of it tomorrow so you can see the progress I've made from now up until then.

Still have a lot of packing to finish up and still trying to find a new place but I have my art when I need a break from it all.

Have a great weekend!

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