My sustainability project.

  I have finished my uni piece for my 'Sustainability' assignment.

Due to the fact the working with glass isn't one of the most sustainable art forms, I decided to create a piece that might draw attention to the plight of the planet instead.  

I also decided that I would not purchase anything to create this piece, but concentrated on working with things I already had.

In my head I wanted to make a clock, to draw attention to the fact that we have limited time left to help the planet.

I had a box of mini wine bottles that I scrubbed and dried, then popped in the kiln to melt down flat.

My kiln is quite an energy efficient one, as it's not soo big, but I did need to do a couple of firings to complete my piece.

Once they were flat I messed about for a bit trying to decide on a formation. Ideally I would have liked to use all twelve bottles, but this was going to make the clock too heavy to hang.  In the end I decided on a formation of eight bottles, leaving some to use in another project at a later date.

I cut the numbers out of old copper sheet that I had rescued from a fire pit.

Once that was all nicely fused I was just going to fit a clock part, when I came across a clock kit in my stash that had an interesting wooden ring. Immediately I thought this would be excellent as a 'warning' ring if painted red.  Warning road signs are usually red rings.  

Because there was also another piece of round wood in the kit, I could sandwich the glass in-between the pieces with glass glue and bolts - therefore making it a much sturdier piece to hang on the wall.

As I now had a red warning ring I felt like I needed a warning statement to go on it.  My daughter helped me out with that - I wanted both the words 'Time' and 'Waste' within it.  She she wrote... "Don't call time on the Earth, reuse, don't waste". That worked really well so I wrote it on.

I was VERY unhappy with this as my handwriting is appallingly bad.  So it was back to the drawing board for that.

After a quick repaint, I dug out my vinyl cutting machine and I had some scraps of black vinyl left that had come from my old shop many years ago.  I cut out the words by machine this time and it looked so much better.  Using the vinyl was something I wanted to avoid if possible, due to it being plastic.  If it wasn't lockdown and I could have found someone with nice handwriting I would have definitely done it that way instead.

Now it was time to put it all together and add the clock mechanism.

And my piece was finished.  And it holds it's own weight well on the wall... and you can tell the time so it's functional too, as well as being a conversation starter,

I have enjoyed this project. I particularly like working with materials that might have otherwise gone in the bin.  Giving something a repurpose is something I try to do in other aspects of my life, like adapting clothing and sprucing up furniture.  So this assignment was right up my street.

A little stumble....

 Today I had a meltdown, like a six year old might, when my project didn't end up looking how I wanted it to look!

The day started well with me managing to scrounge some nuts and bolts off my Husbands friend - I am trying very hard not to purchase a single thing towards the making of this clock, so if I don't personally have what I need I will ask other people if they have it.  If they don't I will have to rethink my plan.

I then had to mark off where to drill on my ring, and the piece that would sit underneath, and find a drill bit large enough to accommodate the bolt.  My first attempt at drilling a hole wasn't massively successful as the wood all chipped badly on the back.

So I gripped it to the underneath piece and decided to drill them together.  This didn't work well either as the wood then just chipped under the second bit.

So I then drilled right through both and into a scrap piece of wood.  This worked!

If at first you don't succeed, try and try again.... as they say.

I didn't want the bolts to be black, so I drilled a load of holes in a scrap of wood to stand them up in while I spray painted them.  I also painted the two pieces of wood as the same time to hide all the chipped holes.

Once the paint was dry it was time to work on the wording.

My daughter had come up with a nice slogan that I thought would work well.  I wanted the word 'Time' in it, and also the word 'Waste'.

"Don't call time on the earth, reused, don't waste"

I liked this so I then proceeded to write it on the ring, in-between the screw holes.

And this is where my meltdown began..... why I even attempted it in the first place is beyond me, I know my handwriting is complete scrawl.

I type, I have no need to write.  Maybe that's a skill I should work on for the future.

The worst bit was, I didn't actually have my meltdown at this point, where it would have been much easier to rectify... no, I waited until I had glued all the wood into place on the glass bottles and screwed all the bolts tightly into place too.  THEN I decided to have my tantrum.

I decided to pour myself a rather large glass of wine and put it all away to deal with another day.

Thanking the Kiln Gods.

  The Kiln Gods were good to me overnight, when I opened the lid of 'big blue' my faithful kiln I was so relieved to see a piece that had worked how I wanted it to.  Always a risky business using recycled glass.

It had slumped down pretty evenly and the numbers had worked.  Big thumbs up all round.

So, off I went to my craft shed to find a clock mechanism that I know I have somewhere as I save all sorts of stuff for 'just-in-case'.

Instead of just finding a mechanism, I actually found a clock kit that someone had gifted me a few years back... now my idea had evolved somewhat, I could use this piece to add something else to the design.

The kit consisted of a wooden clock base, along with a wooden ring and the clock part.

I decided that the ring needed to be bright red... like a warning ring, to warm people about time ticking away to save our planet.

So I painted it all red.

I am going to give it another couple of coats, then work out how to assemble it all!

Deciding on a layout for my clock.

  Sometimes I have a determined plan in my head about where a design should end up, and other times  (most others) I just see how the pieces fit together and how much I like the look.

Not just with glass, but also with quilting and crochet, I will lay out a design, take a photo, move it around, take a photo...numerous times.  Then I go and make a cup of tea and flick through the photos, finally choosing a design/layout that way.

You seem to get a different view through a camera, you can certainly spot flaws and mistakes more in a photograph I think.

So I laid my bottles out in the kiln...

Then I decided that I really did need numbers, at least on some of them.

Using some old copper sheet that I had rescued from a fire pit, hence the beautiful colours on it, and cut it up.

I decided on Roman Numerals as it would be much easier to cut straight lines of copper sheets, rather than cut around shaped numbers.

I don't know where my head was when I did this, as I cut enough pieces to make up numbers 1, 3, 6 and 9, it wasn't until I was placing them that I realised I need a 12 instead of a 1.  thank goodness I caught that in time!

So, back to the kiln and laying out a design.

I finally settled on the middle design, it was a difficult decision which I pondered over for sometime.

The bottom design used all 12 bottles, which equated to the 12 numbers on a clock, but it just seemed a little bulky, plus I thought if I halved the use of the green bottles it would leave enough for another art piece in the future perhaps,

The kiln lid is now tightly shut and heating up nicely to fuse all the pieces together.   Fingers crossed!