Flying visit

Just a very brief note to say that I will be back to my usual self but DH and I have to submit a form to Google (Blogger) about all of the sites that have stolen my content. On a brief trawl through the middle section of my blog DH found 6 sites that had scraped content from my blog. I'm fairly certain there will be more than that to include on the form.

This will take us some time to deal with as life outside keeps on with its demands like away job, creative job and house jobs.

If you visit my flickr account (see Links to the Outside World) you can see a lot of what I am working on at the moment. For instance I have finally designed a piece of jewellery to the Dylan Thomas poem (Under Milkwood) to the line 'Starless and Bible Black'. In order to create this piece I had to learn to use a new medium and make the focal beads myself.

Feel free to leave comments or questions about anything you wish here.

Until whenever . . .

M

Scraping, Splogs (Spam Blogs)

I have a confession to make - I've been Scraped. Ok, ok don't run away - it isn't a weird disease but it is a sickness of our time and technology created by greed and laziness.



What is scraping?



Scraping is, in brief, the act of copying either in part or whole a blog post and putting it on another blog or site purely to get the advertising revenue, or nastier, to infect visitors or get the unsuspecting person to click on a link to porn.



Splogs are Spam Blogs - they are fake blogs made up of stolen content.

At least two of my posts have been lifted in their entirety and posted on two different sites. I suspect the same operator is behind both as their names are similar. I've tried sending a spam blog notice to Blogger but nothing has happened yet (over two weeks have passed) and now I've filed a complaint to Adsense. No guarantee that will work either. The next step is to write (letter or fax only) to Google with a DMS notice. The problem being - you have to give your details and as there is porn on page behind these Splogs I don't reckon they are nice people.



So I have to say that this has dimmed my enthusiasm for posting on my blog. Someone has violated it by stealing the content. But worse, the content they stole is located next to dodgy adverts and a sinister porn page lurking behind it.



I now have to do searches for unique phrases in my earlier posts to see if any more of them have been stolen.



More information and Advice

DH has been great in finding out about this phenomenon and here are some useful links for further reading and action should you find you are a victim of scraping.



http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2006/04/10/what-do-you-do-when-someone-steals-your-content/
http://http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/
http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2006/07/how-to-complain-and-report-spam-blogger-blogs/

About the Image at the top of the page

'Streamers' - This is a pair of earrings on niobium earwires made with polymer clay beads of my own design. I've includes some Swarovski crystals and sterling silver accent beads. Despite their size of 20x22x5mm they are light to wear. I'm hoping to add more Hedgelands originals to my own website soon. If you want to see more images - I have a link to my Flickr account under Links to the Outside World.

Hopefully I will find some enthusiasm for posting in the near future, but I have to say my heart isn't in it at the moment.

Rainy Day Creations

The past 10 days or so has been particularly wet here at Hedgelands! Of course I had a week's leave and had planned to do gardening work - if for no other reason then to make it easier for our resident roe hind to come up to the house to have her twilight feasts.

I can safely say we are a lot more relaxed about this sort of raid then we used to be. However, the weather with the exception of one brief afternoon has not favoured strimming, weeding or any kind of gardening at all. So I had quite a lot of time to look at my stash and ponder.

Art glass panels update

Copper foil panels are relatively undemanding to put together at any pace you like with the exception of the soldering, cleaning and patinating phase. I personally like to do this in one session. For a smallish panel this will take a few hours - a larger panel can take as many as five.

Now it isn't strickly necessary to do this and I know of quite a few talented artisans, especially those who make the lampshades, that soldering is done over days. But I am by nature an impatient person so I like to start and finish in one go.

Of course this requires the luxury of unhurried time - no soldering before work in the afternoon or a shopping trip or appointment. A rainy day when your plans have been undone is perfect weather for soldering (so long as you have a reasonably bright light to work under).

Gothic Arch Design

Sorry, I don't have a better title for this panel at the moment. The foiled piece on the layout board doesn't really give a good indication of what the finished panel will look like. But a lot of the enjoyment and surprise of working with art glass is the transformation of the various materials to make the final piece.

I have to say I am very pleased with this piece. I've used some interesting types of glass in it including a glass jewel, a cut rondel, cobalt sunburst glass and my absolutely favourite clear Tatra antique glass with the exception of some clear/frosted lizard glass and a handmixed blue streaky glass.

Some of you might be wondering why I take images from so many different angles. It might seem a bit excessive (actually I have left out the back view) but many of my creations are offered for sale on-line. I feel very strongly that a potential buyer will want / needs to see the piece from as many angles as necessary to give a fair impression of the item. This is particularly the case with my art glass work as I can't display many of them at face to face exhibition or sales events.

The landscape leaded piece sits on the layout board waiting for me to feel able to move it to the next stage which is leading up. I still haven't resolved a few details about its construction. I do have the cabinet leads, I do have the 'U' shaped edging, I don't have the putty (!). So whilst I dither about ordering the putty and worry about whether the edging is necessary the pieces of glass sit waiting.

Stash Explorations

Well it hasn't been all about art glass during my gardening week off. I also played a bit with my stash. I got some lovely rhodochrosite 10mm cabochons from firemountaingems recently. This is a stone that I have been meaning to use for quite some time. It is, however, a relatively expensive stone and not as widely available as some.

I originally planned to use these cabs in an 'altered' bracelet design. I will still make the bracelets but will use the 4mm pearls and lapis lazuli instead of the rhodochrosite.

I have what seems to be a ton of scrap silver wire and fair few silver sheet scraps that you keep just in case that one piece is key to the completion of a future piece of jewellery. Anyway, in an idle moment - not wishing to start a session of knotting just then - I poked around the scrap sheet metal glass and pulled out all the bigger pieces to see if they might make something interesting.

There were a lot more pieces there then I thought and they were plenty big enough to use for small pendants. I first fiddled around seeing if I could create a rolled over bail for each and for five of them I could manage to make two. This was looking very promising.

In the end, with a little bit of trimming, sanding, smoothing, hammering and soldering I managed to make three mini pendants which I think look interesting together and a five linking panel bracelet.

I particularly like the gorgeous soft pink of the rhodochrosite with the angular shapes of the slightly altered scrap pieces of sterling silver sheet. A beautifully rounded soft shape would be lovely but I like the contrast - who says pink can't be dangerous?

Better weather for the weekend?

Well we are supposed to have better weather this weekend. The wind has died down and so I fear the grass won't dry sufficiently for a good strimmer cut. Maybe some small hedge trimming instead . . .

New adventures in polymer clay coming soon!

Art Glass Mini Panel Progress Plus

I have felt particularly inspired to carry on with some art glass work lately and have some progress to share. And of course I have some new jewellery designs that I'll share with you as well.

Humble beginnings

My aim is to create small art glass panels - leaded or copper foil - to fit commercially produced frames. For these two panels I have chosen some thick light wood frames. Why thick? To take the hanging D shaped brackets. These panels are 4 x 6 and 6 x 8 inches only.

Designs

I start by tracing around the glass insert which gives me the final dimensions of the panels. Everything has to fit within this rectangle or the panel will be too big for the frame. Not a total disaster but this is a technical challenge to fit a space. From small picture frames to window frames is not such a huge jump.

As these frames are quite small my aim is to emphasize colour and form over detail. The first design is of a landscape. This is the smallest design and currently it is cut for lead construction with 'cabinet leads'. These are quite slim leads used to construct cabinet inserts and are suitable only for decorative work. I can always move this to a copper foil construction if needed. The second design is quite rough and is an arched window. There is not much detail in this second drawing but I am proceeding with it as a copper foil piece.

Lead or Copperfoil - Why is that an important detail?

When creating a design which is really a pattern for cutting out the glass pieces the method of construction is important. The different construction methods determine the gap between each piece of glass. If I make a leaded piece I need to allow for the 'heart' of the lead channel between each piece. If I make too small an allowance the panel will be too big. If the allowance is too large the resulting piece will be too small. Lead construction allowances vary with the size and type of lead channels used. The cabinet lead has a relatively small heart and a shallow channel. This doesn't give me much room for errors. Copper foil construction is a little more forgiving but the gap between can be much smaller than that for lead. However, liquid solder will fill even quite large gaps. I use this to my advantage in designs where I want thicker lines and black space.

Cut glass

At the top of the post you can see the landscape design at the cut glass stage. I've kept the number of colours quite small and the shapes simple. Just a note about art glass and photography: this type of art glass is transparent and is designed to be viewed with a light source behind it. The top image has been placed on a light box of my own construction and placed over the design which is on white art paper. You can see the shadows created by the glass on the paper below. The light source is the sun coming into the kitchen window at a steep angle. I took the picture on the floor of the kitchen near the window.

The arch was photographed with the pieces on a white piece of paper. You can't see the colour green at the top of the arch and the hues will be different once they are up and in the light. So although you might fall in love with the look of it in this state - you can't form an attachment to it as the method of photographing has created a false impression in a way.

Arch

The arch draft design was quite vague. The only part of the design I have kept is the bordering pieces for which I have chosen black glass. I didn't create any paper templates for either of these designs. All cutting was done by laying the glass on the design and following the lines or drawing the lines and then cutting.

The interior of the arch was created in a freeform manner. That is I started with the glass jewel and added glass from a limited palet from there. I choose the glass by holding pieces up to the light to test how they might work together. This sort of designing as you go method is really only suitable for copper foil construction. As you can see, the Arch is going to have very strong colours.

Next Steps

The next step for these two panels is for the sharp and rough edges to be smoothed. I may just use a whetstone as the cuts look quite good to me. If I need to reduce the size of pieces will mean I have to use the grinder. From there I will foil the pieces (Arch) or begin to lead up. However, the leaded piece will require putty and the little tub I have has gone solid so I need to order some more before I can complete it. For the Arch, after foiling comes soldering, patinating and cleaning. Then a nice shine up and pop it into the frame.

Soon on a website near you . . .

I will be listing 'Dimly Remembered Tree of Plenty' on my website very soon. The tremendous advantage of these mini panels is their relative costs and weight. A small panel like this can be bought from me for as little as £30 and sent for under £10 (UK).

Jewellery fix

My sister often sends me little bits and pieces to play with. The word plaques also have Chinese characters on the reverse. I had the 3 to five connectors already and thought that I could possibly use all the word tags in one piece. The metal work is silverplated as is the chain. I added swarovski crystal bicones in a rainbow sequence and the words in an order that suggested the process of creation. Wish / Believe / Inspire / Create / Share.

I do love making these 'off the wall' pieces. I have quite a little collection of them. Perhaps I should join DeviantArt and see how they do.

Till next time . . .