A friend of mine was getting rid of a desk, so I pinched it to give me a separate surface that would be perfect for cracking on with the printing. It was great, but I still covered all of the available surface and ran out of room. I just can’t work any smaller…
Hand rubbing with a baren
At first I really struggled to get a satisfactory print with my plastic baren, so I substituted the back of a stainless steel measuring cup. It worked fine, but what I didn’t expect was getting hot fingers from holding the inside of the cup as I rubbed it over the block!
As there was no room for stacking wet prints, I used some old skirt hangers that I’d been saving just for this purpose, along with some doubled-up space-saving hanger thingies.
My version of a space-saving print drying rack.
Casting aluminium ingots
We got the furnace fired up again to melt more cans and make more ingots in readiness for casting our finished projects.
In all honesty, it was a bit of a pain not jumping straight into casting the end products, but I didn’t even have a finished prototype of my coin sculpture, so there was no point in rushing it.
Our first aluminium ingot – we cast 5 during the second melt.
I sacrificed a donut-shaped muffin tin for the cause. It was worth it as I never seemed to get anything out of there in one piece anyway, and the ingots come out as cute mini metal rings!
Rise of the bots: why your auto dms on Twitter aren’t fooling anyone
If you’ve spent any time on Twitter, you’ll probably have come across the automated Direct Message, or auto DM.
They’re supposed to be a tool to drive engagement and make new followers feel welcomed. Well, I’ll cut this post significantly shorter than it could be by getting to the point: they’re annoying and no-one likes them.
Some of the most annoying are the ones that essentially go: “hey, thanks for following me on Twitter! Now go follow me here, there and everywhere else, and now go read my blog or buy this thing”. Cheeky or what?
But you’ve been told you should be doing it? Wha? Who should you believe?
A confession: I’ve done auto DMs myself
Yep, I myself have set up auto DMs on Twitter in the past. Why? I read some advice somewhere online that made me think it was a good idea.
Where did I get that advice from? Probably a company that provides auto DM services. Makes sense, right?
Why did I stop? I got very, very little engagement back from those messages, and I would guess it’s because I just came across like every other bod who uses bots.
I’ve even read that they’re not all bad, as they provide an opportunity to start a conversation with someone who might not yet be following you back. But wait – that person’s sent an automated message because they don’t want to start a conversation themselves. They’re probably too busy, or most likely, they don’t check their DMs because they’re also swamped with auto DMs as well.
Adding a “mistake” to look more human? Don’t bother.
Not so convincing after you’ve seen three or four people make the same “mistake”.
There must be some diabolical mind behind that automated message service that, right at the end, purposefully misspells “week” as “qeek”. Then, instantly, it sends a follow up message that says “week*, not qeek, oops“.
This might get you, but not after you’ve followed the second person who makes the identical “mistake” at the end of their message. After the third person makes that identical mistake… well, it’s suddenly more sad than funny.
What to do instead of auto DMs
Lots of people will tell you to simply be a human and engage with people on Twitter to build your following.
Well, they’re right. However…
The fact is that most of us are busy, and becoming increasingly more busy hammering away at every social media strategy we can to give our blogs and businesses a fighting chance in this competitive online space. We’re stressed. We can’t do it all. So we look for easy options.
What do I suggest?
How about taking a bit of time to check your feed and retweet something that catches your eye? Or comment? Or even just like someone else’s tweet?
Oh, and don’t bother starting a DM by apologising for sending it even though you know they’re annoying. If you already know it… just… stop.
Automating social media without being totally fake
The fact is, you can’t be online all of the time, and I’ve even taken an extended break from promoting my work on Twitter because I just wanted the headspace back.
I recommend RecurPost for automating some aspects of social media (including Twitter, as we’ve been discussing). It’s easy to use and has a free starter plan, and leaves no icky feeling whatsoever!
This week in the studio we started a long-awaited project: building a charcoal-fired backyard foundry in a bucket. Now, most of my projects carry on over several weeks, if not longer, but this project is definitely not a one-week wonder.
I think there will be several more weeks of updates as we refine and add to it, but this week we made a start of buying and scavenging all of the pieces, putting them all together and testing it out.
For the fuel, we used regular lumpwood charcoal, bought from the pound store for £1 per bag, of course.
The galvanised steel bucket and old wastepaper bin we used to form the cast.
The bucket
We picked up a galvanised steel bucket (like this one) and small plastic paint kettle from The Range in order to cast our refractory cement and form the body of the forge.
The refractory cement we used came in a 25kg bag, and we got it from a local foundry supplies merchant. (I know, what are the chances of having one in my neighbourhood, right?) They also sold us a huge bag of oil bonded sand and a graphite clay crucible.
The crucible
The crucible itself cost £30… we were happy to get a decent one and not attempt to DIY it from some salvaged steel, as we plan to do it properly (as properly as can be done in a bucket) and don’t like the idea of a crucible failing.
The lid
We made a lid for the foundry by pouring some of the cement into a circular frame and embedding some scavenged handles into it. A bit of extra cement went into a plastic food container and made a handy slab that we used to cover the lid entirely.
The central hole was made by placing a plastic cup onto the board before pouring the cement, but it crumpled under the weight and left a wibbly outline. It took a fair bit to fill the bucket, but there’s still plenty more left over for more projects – maybe a small kiln?
Drilling the air supply port after casting was a bit of a nightmare.
Powering the furnace with a hair dryer
We were told (by YouTube) to connect up a hair dryer via a pipe and steel tubing to blow air into the furnace. The problem was, the hair dryer got too hot when taped to the pipe, even with holes cut into the tape.
Blowing air directly into the steel pipe worked, but it didn’t get very hot. It was only when we abandoned the pipe altogether and blew the hair dryer directly into the air port that we got the foundry hot enough to bring the crucible up to temperature.
First firing – tempering the crucible
Firing up the foundry for the first time was exciting, but we knew we weren’t going to start melting any aluminium straight away. We had to temper the crucible first – bring it up to glowing red hot and let it cool down again.
The heating process took a lot longer than we wanted it to, because, basically, we had to figure it out as we went along. The air supply issue was critical to the foundry heating adequately, and when we got the right amount of air blowing in thanks to the hair dryer being up close, it really took off.
Cooling down took all day though, and I’m not kidding – even into the night, the foundry was hot! The handle was cool enough to carry it indoors though. That residual heat came in handy for lunch though – I managed to cook an egg on the top of it and even cooked hamburgers in a flash, before our separate barbecue could even get up to temperature.
It looks as though metal melting days will be barbecue days as well! Next step will be to start melting our scrap aluminium and casting into ingots.
This week in the studio I’ve been bouncing between a couple of projects – making silicone moulds from regular silicone mixed with cornstarch, and starting my woodcut coin print.
Silicone and corn starch moulds
I bought two tubes of silicone and two boxes of cornstarch weeks ago, ready to have a go at making my own silicone moulds. Never mind that I didn’t really have a plan as to what I wanted to cast – I just wanted to see if I could make it work.
It was worth the cost of a few cheap tubes to experiment, but even though I had my materials, I forgot about it for a while. When the summer holidays started, it seemed like a good time to get started on the experiment, if only to get T interested in making. It turns out that he wasn’t too interested in the process, but I was hooked.
To do this, you need acetoxy-cure silicone, also known as Silicone 1. It’s the kind that smells of ammonia, so I did all of my mixing outdoors.
Barbados 1 cent coins pressed into silicone.
My first tries were random, with a bit of everything thrown in. My second attempt was a lot more purposeful, but more on that later. The silicone picks up a tremendous amount of detail though, just look at the impressions my Bajan 1 cent coins made!
Woodcut coin block
Like many of my projects, this one has been a long time in the making, and has used components from some seemingly unrelated experiments.
The block for this was salvaged and used for a series of silhouette drawings – nothing that I ever really intended to see the light of day, really, just to have around the house. Eventually I admitted that I didn’t like it much and that I could give it over to a worthier cause.
Woodcut blocks are romantic enough but dang, they are hard work! In fairness, I don’t have any actual woodcutting tools (not for this kind of work) and I can only find two lino blades, which I blunted in the course of carving the block.
I’ve got plans for this but think I’ll have to get my hands on some oil-based printing ink, as the second pull I made with water-based ink did gum up the block somewhat. I decided to spray it with a sealant, but that took away a bit of the charm of the block’s original colours… still, it had to go sometime.
The block is a means to an end as it’s a part of my money project, but I like thinking about print blocks as works in their own right as well, so I actually made a silicone mould of the block itself, so I can replicate it in case it gets ruined… or just if I want to!
If you’ve been snooping around the internet for a while, you’ll start to get a bit blog-blind.
What do I mean?
Well, think: what was the last blog you visited that really stood out? Are you getting so lost in a haze of hyper-feminine brush text that you can’t even read what the blog title is? Or have you seen the same image so many times that you get déjà vu every time you go online?
Here are a few reasons why we’ve started to look the same.
The Internet has grown up
Back in the day, web designers used to let rip… with weird results.
Now that the Internet has grown up, and every established company has a web property and knows how to squeeze every last cent out of it, there are established conventions that are more or less followed when designing websites.
These conventions make websites and blogs easy to read, understand and navigate. It might be boring, but it’s generally for the best.
We’re copying one another
Yep, we’re just plain old copying each other. On purpose. You’ve seen a successful blogger whose site you love, so you’ve gone out and found a template that looks like it.
Like when you see someone in a dress you love, so you go find it, buy it, and then dread running into them when you’re both wearing the same thing.
Hey, the truth is that this is a natural by-product of the lowered barrier to entry that web publishing has experienced. Most bloggers are simply regular people who like to write, not coders. Creating a fantastically unique site from scratch would be impossible for them, just like most people go shopping instead of designing and sewing their own clothes, and that’s ok; after all, you don’t expect everyone to walk around naked just because they can’t run up a frock on their own.
Unless you’re developing your site from scratch, you’ll probably end up bumping into someone who’s wearing your dress. Just try to customise it a bit so it’s not so obvious (think chunky jewellery… and by that I probably mean changing your fonts, colours and widgets).
We’re all playing by Pinterest’s rules.
Ever spend any time on Pinterest?
You’ll risk overdosing on brush script fonts, flowers and PINK.
Pinterest is a huge driver of traffic to blogs, so we’re all dancing to their tune: all vertical images (usually 735 x 1103 or longer), flat lay photography, and things that women are meant to like.
Spending too much time on Pinterest gives me the visual equivalent of eating too many sugared almonds after a wedding… it hurts my teeth.
Carefully planned to fit perfectly into Pinterest’s optimum size and ratio, this stock image is no different from the rest.
Stock photos have taken over the world
We’re all swamped with all of the things we’re told we need to do for the sake of our blogs. Is it any wonder we have no time or energy to take our own photos?
I’m not going to knock stock photography. With my other blogs, especially when I first started, I’m not gonna lie – my photography stank. I’m a writer and a painter. I’m not a photographer. So yes, stock photography has saved many a blogger’s butt, including mine.
But… I’m sick of seeing the same photographs over and over andoverandoverandover. I’m sure you are too, or you will be once you start hanging out on Pinterest more. If you need to use a stock photograph, try to make sure it’s one that hasn’t been overused, or try to edit, crop, flip or change it a bit to be more personal.
This is one that’s easy to get wrong, as even if you source a little-used photograph for your article, it can become popular after the fact. However, if you’re settling on the first few images that pop up in Canva, then you can be sure that lots of people are doing the same.
That’s why we’re all starting to look the same…
There’s nothing wrong with focusing on what works well when it comes to blog design and using those principles for yourself. Still, we ought to try for a bit of originality… although remember, the thing has to be legible if you want to actually get and keep readers.
Personally, I’m pushing it a bit with my current typeface of choice – it’s nearly illegible but I love it! Very, very naughty.
Well, what do you think? Is looking the same a good, or bad thing?
