Playing Favorites: house & home

Gwen Buchanan
http://gwenbuchanan.blogspot.com

The Carved Headboard
Once upon a time back in the '90's I carved this headboard for my bed.... The 2" thick pine planks came from a tree that had grown not far from the house, across the brook up on the hill. They had dried for a year and were straight & true. Now they would be made into a bed....

The planks were glued together on their edges and clamped.... Shaped with a large 5' tall curved section in the center & two shallow curves on either side.... It was for a queen size bed.

When it was dry I drew a design of interwoven vines & flowers on the large center curved section. I used wood carving tools called gouges & an old hunting knife with a curve in the blade to cut out the design. I liked the hunting knife as it kept a keen edge....

It was very time consuming ... but not in a bad way.... rather meditative.... I did have to keep an eye out for the direction that the grain ran.... 'cause if I didn't my gouges would splinter parts of the wood or they would skip across the plane of the lumber & cut where it shouldn't.... When I had it all carved, I smoothed it with sandpaper in grades that finally arrived at the finest.... I rubbed oil into the thirsty wood... it glistened.... I buffed it with a soft cotton cloth... it gleamed...

I was happy.

Then it was done....

It felt so good when I laid in my bed in a half awake state & rubbed my hands across it.... Soothing....
I knew I had done it with my own hands. It made me feel good to know that...

I thought I would sleep in that bed for the rest of my life.... but I never .... things don't always last as long as you hope.... so cherish every moment....

It and the house it stood in only existed for a short time... only the ashes remain.
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John Ackerson
http://johnackerson1.blogspot.com


Heat Shield
10 ' tall steel - welded, drilled and bolted, heated and bent

Besides painting, I love working with steel. This is a 10' tall heat shield I made to protect the wall directly behind the Jotul wood stove in the living room. Besides being very functional, I wanted it to have a cool degree of interest in its design.

I'll always remember working on this project. I was half way through cutting, and welding outside on a sunny morning when that fateful news came over the radio I was listening to on September 11.
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Inge Bekaert
http://web.mac.com/pinkepinke/pinkepinke/Blog/rss.xml

I think my best creations are my children Freek, Aran and Gaia... They
are one of a kind, they never go out of fashion because they keep on
evolving and as a mom it's a challenge to help them create a life of
their own...
My second best creation is my house. It's an old house from 1924 : for
the past fifteen years I have been busy to renovate and decorate it
all by myself. It's full of colors because colors make me happy. All
shades of purple are my favorite, but I also like lemongreen,
turquoise....

I love to look for creative solutions like this mirrorsurrounding: I wanted something special for this focal point so I made a drawing based on paintings I saw in fantasybooks. I painted it right on the wall around my mirror. The color of the walls changed already two times, but this "artpiece" stays for as long as I live in my house, because I never get tired of it.
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Jonna Barnett
http://jonnabarnett.blogspot.com

There goes the neighborhood. I was driving home from work one day listening to Sheryl Crow and one line in the lyrics was 'there goes the neighborhood' and it reminded me of my ex-sister-in-law. When they bought their first house she wanted to paint it in rainbow colors, each door a different color, window frames a different color and each board a different color. It never happened as her husband veto'd the idea but it stuck in my mind. When I got home that night I started on this piece. It is one of my favorites and has been very popular with everyone who sees it.