February 14, 2006

I bought these 8-inch pine disks from Pat Catans, and am doing some experimenting with them for making altar pentacles. One I have stained completely with this lovely dark walnut stain. When its ready, I plan to do the pentagram design in gold leaf. I have another one that I plan to do the pentagram design in the actual stain, so the wood is two-toned, like an inlay. I might play a little with painting one, and the fourth design is to actually carve out the pentacle design then refill it with colored resin and sand it down. Though to be honest I'm not holding very high expectations for the carved one, because the carving chisels I bought at Pat Catan's are junk. I'm probably going to campus tomorrow, so I will likely look for some better carving tools.

February 15, 2006

I found the instructions for drawing a perfect 5 point star, and used them to design this woven pentacle that is inspired by the one in The Witches Shield. After cutting out the stencil, I tried using the stain to make the design on the regular disk. Unfortunately, It ran all over the place under the stencil. I'm going to try again, but with the gel stain this time instead of this oil-based stain. I just completed the staining of that piece, so I can work with it later. I sealed the disk I had stained, and then used the stencil to spray the gold leaf adhesive. Once the adhesive had had time to get tacky, I started applying the flakes. This is what I ended up with.      As you can see, it didn't come out quite right. I've got some adjustments to make, and I'm going to continue tinkering. I'm going to try allowing more time for the sealer to fully cure before I do the leafing. It's possible the leaf is sticking to the sealant as much as the adhesive. Also, there were points where the stencil seemed to raise up off the disk, because of the corners hanging off. I've trimmed the stencil into a round so that it will hopefully lay flatter. I may also try remaking the stencil with contact paper instead of the plastic material, which should tack down and make sure no adhesive seeps under. I'm just a bit concerned about the possibility that the adhesive from the contact paper will leave a residue on the disk and the leaf flakes will stick to that. Luckily, the wood disks aren't expensive, so tinkering isn't all that expensive. Though this leaf isn't cheap. Between the sealant, adhesive, and the leaf, I spent 25 bucks. Ahh well, once the design is perfected, they won't be too difficult to produce in quantity once I have a stencil design I can use

February 21, 2006

I made another stencil using my contact paper. Unfortunately, the paper was really flimsy, and it was all kinds of hell to try and get it down on the disk. Ultimately I Had to rip the thing off. I think my next step is to get a different paper and try the stencil again. In the meantime I tried again with the stencils that I had. I got a much better image this time, but it's still not quite right. Everything laid down properly, but when I lifted the stencil off, part of the adhesive kind of got stringy and then laid down on the disk. Which is the cause of the blur, and one of the points screwing up. This is what I wound up with...

July 26, 2006

Today I finished another attempt at the Altar Pentacle. I took my stencil and used a pencil to draw the design onto the wood. Then with a small paintbrush I painted in the design in green. Once that dried, I took a metallic gold calligraphy pen and outlined the design. After it was all dried I sealed it. This time the design was much more crisp, so I've resolved that issue, even though it's much more time consuming. The gold is another story. The gold paint doesn't look nearly as nice as the gold leaf. So, I'm going to have to use actual gold leaf. I can either use a fine paint brush to try and apply the adhesive, or I saw a pen that has the adhesive in it. I don't know what kind of point the glue pen has on it though. I'm getting closer, but not quite there just yet.