Linda's Magic Workshop - Linda Britt Design

Seedpods are a secret love of mine.  I collect them and many different kinds line my window sill.  I love to make them out of metal clay This bronze seedpod started out with bronze clay wrapped around a wax shape that was covered in saran wrap.   After the clay dried, I pulled out the wax through a hole I made for the bale.  The center seeds are thin steel circles that were placed over the bronze layer.  I painted veins on the sides and back with bronze slip (thinned bronze clay), sanded and let the piece dry.  The bronze clay was fired in activated charcoal in a 2 stage process and I always hold my breath when I remove a fired piece from the kiln several hours later.  Did the clay sinter (did it fuse into metal?)  or will I need to fire it again?  This time the clay did sinter except for one steel circle which got lost in the charcoal. After polishing my seedpod, I reviewed my choices.  I could leave th...

The beach at Aptos CA Peter and I just returned from a quick 4 day trip to Aptos CA near Monterey CA to pick up a beautiful blue harpsichord he bought on E-bay.  Early keyboard instruments are a love of Peter’s and we both are learning to play. Our Flemish Moermans 1583 Hubbard Copy Harpsichord It’s been a long time since I’ve been in that area and I knew there were two things I wanted to do. One was to take a walk to the beach and the other was to have dinner at Shadowbrook Restaurant in Capitola. I still remember the first meal I had there 30 years ago! When we arrived in Aptos, we got the chance to walk to the beach from the seller’s home.  Walking through the forest to the beach offered so much texture and color that I thought I would share that walk with you.  I’ve always found the beach and the sand to be calming.  In fact, I could spend hours watching it.  Red-breasted Sapsucker was working on his tree!  Those are his hol...

Last week I started sharing my vision of a book for my friend, Michelle, who helped me press and collect the flowers from our 2008 trip to Ecuador.  My next step was to visit my neighbor who is a talented bookbinder.  I took my finished pages (at least I thought so at the time) and hoped he would have some suggestions for putting the book together. We discussed making an accordion of folded paper to hold each page or making a box to hold the loose pages.  I took home two books on bookmaking to read and experiment.  One of the requirements I had was to make sure I could open the pages fully without damaging the dried flora.  That presented challenges of protecting the flowers and I used a translucent paper to cover the dried flower cut smaller that the floral page.  It would be easy to lift the translucent cover to see the actual flower. Somewhere about this time I realized that I had 2 different widths of pages.  That would n...