Craft Projects- A Few Minutes at a Time

Ball on a temporary stand while being spray painted.

A lot of people look at my crafts and say they would like to do them, but that they don't have that kind

Green patina highlights the crannies.

of time.  Many people that have the skills to do higher end crafts stick with quick projects for the same reason.  Today I want to blog about finding the time to make art or crafts.  Finding a few hours would be nice,  but many projects can be done a few minutes at a time.  It is something like the story of the tortoise and the hare.  The hare wants to do a project in a sprint and get it done in one sitting.  The tortoise is willing to finish the project at a slower pace.  The craft project still gets done; it just takes longer.  In many cases that might be better than trying to make the craft quickly.  It is easy to becomes stressed or frustrated when
working on too tight a timeline.  Making a project should be enjoyable, not an ordeal.

Regular readers know that I have been working on my Celtic Knot Work walking stick.  My last blog post showed that I had managed to get the first ten inches burned onto the stick.  Between prepping the pattern, transferring the pattern to the stick, and wood burning it onto the stick it took about two hours and forty-five minutes.  Even that was broken down into segments of twenty minutes, twenty five minutes, and an hour.  For something such as the wood burning, I feel that I really need a good hour to sit down with it because I am working outside.  It takes time to take the bench and tools out, and put them away.  That has to be accounted for as well.  This part of the project is one that really requires more time in one sitting. It is not always easy to find that amount of time especially when it is an outdoor project and is weather dependent.  This project moves slower than some others. 

As I make my projects as a hobby, I can't always spend a large block of time on crafting.  When that happens, I have to acknowledge the frustration and do what I can when I can find the time.  Finding small blocks of time here and there have allowed me to create some projects that otherwise never have seen the light of day.  I thought that over the next few blog posts I would show you some of my projects that have been done a little bit at a time.  Some are new and have not been on the blog before.  Others you may have seen before if you are a regular reader. 

My most recent project is another Hypertufa Gazing Ball.  The ball is cast in half-spheres and joined together.  Painting this project was quick in actual time spent.  This ball was spray painted with an indoor-outdoor metallic paint called Aged Copper by Rustoleum.  It produced a nice metallic shine.  I placed it on a temporary stand to spray paint it.  I sprayed the upper hemisphere which took only a few minutes.  The ball was left outside for an hour so that it was dry to the touch, and then brought it in overnight in order for the paint to completely cure.  The next day I took it outside, turned it over and spray painted the other side.  Then allowed it to cure again.  It was a nice shiny ball and the ball could have been declared finished at that point.  However, I decided to embellish. 

I have a philosophy in crafting. Work on the project until it could be considered complete.  Then find at least one way that you could add an embellishment to it.  When that section of embellishment is completed, look at it again and see if there is at least one more thing that could be added to the project.  My projects look better when I take the extra time to add something more.  In the case of this gazing ball, I decided that all the little crannies in the ball could be highlighted with a greenish patina to make it look as if it was copper that had been weathered outside for a long time. 

The decision to highlight the crannies was another bit of crafting wisdom.  If you have some annoying part of your craft that you can't get rid of, make it a feature.  The Hypertufa does not cast as smoothly as concrete.  It has lots of little crannies.  If I am covering the ball in mosaic tiles or stained glass, people never see them or the cold join in the center of the ball.  In this case  the ball was painted and the crannies were visible.  Instead of being frustrated by the crannies, I decided to highlight them.  When people look at the metallic ball and they see the pits tinted green, they start to develop a story about this ball.  It is old.  It has been here a long time.  It has a history.  It is amazing how  people's reactions to an art piece change once their imaginations have been triggered.

I used Rustoleum American Accents Authentic Patina for this part of the project.  The patina kit was not bought specifically for the project.  I was using up some leftovers from one of my husband's projects. The green patina is a applied with a sponge rather than being a spray paint.  It only took about twenty or thirty minutes to do half the ball and clean up.  The next day I found some time to paint the other half of the ball.  Once again, the project could have been declared complete.  However, I decided that I wanted to give the ball a light spray of copper so that the green appeared to be in the pits and crannies rather than all over the ball.  Now I am calling the painting of the ball completed. 

I will add three coats of indoor-outdoor varnish to the ball before it finds its way outside for good.  I still have to paint and varnish the stand as well.  A few minutes at a time is all it takes.

On Thursday I will be blogging on another project that was completed a few minutes at a time.  This was a really fun project.  I hope you will check back to see it.