cover girl, again!

Oh wow! I got my copy of The Rampant Colt magazine in the mail today. I knew about this already, but actually seeing my scrimshaw on the cover is pretty freaking awesome. The Colt Collector's Association meet is next weekend, I'll be curious to find out how it goes. The incredibly fantastic engraving is done by Mike Dubber.

Woo hoo! :-)





(it is ONE gun, fyi, pictured twice on the cover)

The CCA 2009 Auction Gun, another photo

I can't resist posting another photo! Courtesy of Mike Dubber.

[EDIT: The CCA asked me not to post photos of the completed gun until it's released for publication later this summer. I will re-post all the photos at that time. Sorry for the confusion.]

Engraving by Mike Dubber.
Scrimshaw by me.
Accessories made by Joe Lozito.
Accessories engraved by by Ron Nott.

If you would like to read the forum comments about this gun, you can do that here.

The CCA 2009 Auction Gun

I have a few pics to show you of the Colt Collector's Association 2009 Auction Gun (on which I scrimmed the ivory grips). I am hoping for pics that show the entire thing, and I know I'll be getting more eventually, but yeah right like I could wait!

[EDIT: The CCA asked me not to post photos of the completed gun until it's released for publication later this summer. I will re-post all the photos at that time. Sorry for the confusion.]

In other news I HATE HOT WEATHER. It was over 100 this weekend. There's just no need for that. Grumble.

I am rearranging the scrimshaw/engraving part of the studio again. I just have not been happy with the setup, and since at least for the next while I'm doing more scrim than metal engraving, I'm going to try working on the tabletop again instead of at the vise. This will change the whole placement of the scope and chair and actually allow me to sit more like a normal person. Less back pain = yay. And I bought a set of plastic storage drawers at Staples so I can get all my supplies in order. I have trouble maintaining tidiness, but for some reason sorting things into labeled plastic baggies and organizing into drawers brings great glee. Weird.

Scrimshaw grips for the Colt Collector's Association gun

These are grips for the 2009 Colt Collector's Association Annual Auction Gun. It's great to be done, and I can't wait to see photos of the entire gun. I have not seen it, though I know the Battleship North Carolina is engraved on it, and I'll bet there's a lot of gold! The theme this year was North Carolina. It was a huge honor to be asked to do this job by the engraver Mike Dubber. I'm told I'm probably the first scrimshander to work on one of these auction guns, and definitely the first woman to work on one of them. That's kind of a big deal. :-) The gun will be published on the cover of Rampant Colt magazine (published by the CCA) and will have photos and a bio inside the magazine. That comes out in September, I believe.

May 7 work in progress

I'm getting very close to my 1000th blog post. What do you want me to talk about?

The Cape Hatteras image is almost done, just a little tweaking still to do, and then all the final polishing. You will get to see pics of the entire gun, but I'm not sure when. I don't have it, I've never even seen it. These grips will go back to the engraver, and when he gets the gun back from the gunsmith he'll put the grips on, and take pics, and then it'll go to the Colt Collector's Association, and they will take pics for their magazine. This really is one of those once-in-a-lifetime things, and one of the rare cases where the word "opportunity" isn't just a line, it's the real deal. :-)

I started work on the blue areas of the knife today. If you were afraid I was talking about bright blue or something..ha ha no. The dark blues are very dark, and the lighter blues will be kind of a faded denim color. I'm still trying to get the right color mix... tomorrow. *yawn*

When these things are done I need to organize my studio. I'm accumulating more scrimshaw related stuff and it's driving me nuts having everything on the table top. I think I'll get one of those plastic organizer things with a zillion drawers from Staples. Could put it right there, but I'd have to move the little bookshelf, hmmm, where to put that. I frequently think about packing up the paints and easel, hmmm.

May 6 work in progress

I love this! :-D

I still think I'll pull this off in time, though it looks like the knife will not get an image on the back. Maybe something really simple? Just a border? I dunno. That tape is looking skanky to the max, I can't wait to get this done and untape it so I can see how fabulously cool it looks. Can't risk accidental scratches in the mean time though. I might do the blue color next, and then the brown. Hmm. I'm probably going to wish I'd done the blue first, but that's okay, it'll work.

The CCA grips are nearly done, just need to finish the clouds on the Cape Hatteras side (tomorrow, if all goes well). Then multiple coats of wax, and photo time!

May 4 work in progress

And, May the fourth be with you. *snork* :-)

May 3 work in progress

I want to clarify something about these images that I'm putting on this gun. Though the subject matter was chosen by the CCA, and I was sent some reference photos, the compositions here are entirely my own. The ovals, the landscape, that's all me. The grips were actually sent with sample engravings that I could transfer on and copy if I so desired, but I didn't want the images to be just floating in space, and I wanted to somehow tie the two sides together so I ended up kinda starting from scratch with preliminary drawings (in Photoshop this time). I think they look super fabulous, props to me. :-D

I think I'm on track, time-wise. I have not worked on the knife for a couple days, since the gun is a little more urgent.

May 2 work in progress

April 30 work in progress

April 29 work in progress

Seventeen years ago today I bought my first horse, Thunder. I can't believe it's been that long. An anniversary I'll always remember. :-)

I am pretty sure this side of of the CCA grips is now finished with the Wright Flyer image. Sooo, tomorrow I'll start working on the other side, which features the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse (in it's original beach location). And of course I'll still be working on the knife. I'm ready to do the background, and need to figure out exactly HOW to do it!

April 28 work in progress

Today was a short day due to afternoon/evening plans with family (including of course the cutest baby on the planet), but I'm zonked and at a good stopping point for the day. The beach scenery is not at all finished.

April 27 work in progress

I feel like I ought to be talking about stuff, but this is about all I can manage right now.

April 26 work in progress

I keep talking about this May 15 deadline, but it's actually sooner than that. The CCA grips need to be back in the hands of the engraver on or before that date, so I am planning to ship them out on or before the 11th, which means I need to be done on or before the 10th (and if you know me you know this probably means I'll be finishing about 2am the 11th, but let's hope not). I feel like I'm on track with this, just need to focus and work like mad for the next 14 days. The zebra knife also needs to ship out that week. Eek!

A little Q & A session:

Q: What's the weird light area/reflection on the grips?
A: That's the reflection of the fluorescent ring light underneath the microscope. The grips are sitting under the scope when I take these photos.

Q: What happens if you mess up?
A: Messing up really is not an option. Extremely minor messups can sometimes be sanded off and buffed away, or you can try to fudge it and somehow incorporate your mistake into something else. But for all practical purposes, it would be the end of the world. (Yeah, no pressure or anything).

Progress:

April 24 work in progress

Woo wee! This is going to kick some serious booty upon completion. :-) I worked on the knife a bit today too but have not inked my progress, so there's not much to see yet. But here's how far I got on the Wright Flyer side of the CCA grips (going to do this entire side first, and then the lighthouse side):

I'm hoping to squeeze in a bit of horsey time this weekend, since the weather is good. I so want to GO somewhere and trail ride, arg. Pity I can't fit my horse in my car.... I had go to into town this morning to run a few errands, so I stopped by the fabric store in search of cute fabric. I have in mind to sew some cute little dresses! I think this aunt gig is going to suit me well. ;-)

I baked a new dessert recipe tonight, it was called "brownie fudge dessert." That sounds pretty generic but it's an apt title, it really is somewhere between brownies and fudge. Maybe I'll post the recipe. Not tonight though, I've used up all my energy.

April 23 work in progress

This is without a doubt the most intense thing I've ever worked on. And it's going REALLY well. :-D

Loooooonnng way to go on this side (and the other side, and the knife):

April 21 work in progress

Wow. I spent the ENTIRE day doing the image transfer for the CCA gun. :-0 I knew it would take a while, but geez! The first challenge was to get the two images aligned in the same spot on each side. And then I poked about a gazillion dots through the paper printout with the crazy sharp sewing needle. Worked well! I ended up with a VERY fine outline of dots, which is just what I wanted. I would not use that tool for doing actual scrim, it's such a fine point it would take way too long to accomplish anything with it!

Transferring the image is my least favorite part. It makes me nervous. Well, these ones did anyway. I have to remind myself to keep breathing. And take frequent breaks, stretch my hand, stretch my back, etc. Scrimshaw is not a job for the faint of heart of the shaky of hand!

I want to make sure ya'll understand how rounded these grips are, it's definitely not a flat surface I'm working on! (So that requires constant re-focusing of the scope whenever I move something). What kind of gun? Colt Single Action Army .45, aka Colt SAA.

For kicks, the current state of the scrim/engraving bench. Aaaaack! It's only clean if I'm not busy. I'm busy. :-)

Completed transfer of Wright Flyer and Cape Hatteras Lighthouse (these images will get much more obvious as I progress!) Oh! If at some point I said this was going to be the 1903 Wright Flyer (did I say that?) that is not correct. It is NOT the 1903, it's a later version.


19 days to finish CCA gun, and hopefully the zebra knife too, though I can push that one a few more days if I need to. Egads.

While watching the Brassies and Blue Brassies putter around the back yard today, I think I decided to keep them. I'm all over the place with this decision, but I have to think if it was really the right time to let them go I wouldn't be agonizing over it. Maybe next year. Maybe not. I just don't think I can let them go. I'm down to less than 40 birds now, I have 11 empty pens, maybe I need to just stick with this for a while and see how it feels. Blue Brassy Back hens are my absolute favorites, how can I not have them?

April 20 work in progress, plus other stuff

Okay, I think I'm going to start incubating eggs on May 25. I'm still taking orders for Black Rosecomb eggs. BBReds are sold out for the season (if you're hysterically crying reading that, email me, I'll see what I can do for you, but no promises). Not sure how many I'll hatch, guess I'll see what I feel like! :-)

I did not have time to do the image transfer on the CCA grips today. I did a little practice on a plastic spoon (because I wanted to try out the new sewing-needle tool, and see how much detail I can transfer from the Wright Flyer image). I'm pretty optimistic about it, just need to take it REALLY slow and careful. It'll probably take me a couple hours just to transfer the images (same method as I did for the knife, paper printout taped on, dotted through). Animal subjects are so much easier, I can freehand so much of them!

These are the three sets of grips I have right now. The one on the left is for the Colt Collector's Association annual auction gun (which I refer to as the CCA gun because that's a mouthful). The other two are for a private client, I'll be working on those starting in late May or early June.

I've never worked on anything as big and chunky as a pistol grip, and I don't want them rolling around on my little "table top" so I made this nifty beanbag. It's leftover flannel from my awesome pajama pants, and filled with rice. Yay, holds them nicely in place!

Progress on the zebra knife. I can't wait to see it without all this tape and stuff on there! If you missed that in an earlier post, it's wrapped in tape and felt so that I don't impale myself (it's not a folding knife) and also to protect the bolsters and back side ivory from any accidental scratches.

Oh, and Mr. Barn Swallow agrees with me that 96 degrees is WAY TOO HOT for this time of year. He's panting! This is photographed through the window right next to where I work all day, so he's all of maybe 6 feet away from me.

April 19 work in progress

It would have been a lovely day today, maybe for the middle of August! Low 90s in April? I'm not okay with that, I'd like to have spring again. Oh yeah, you're going to have to listen to me gripe about summer again...

On the bright side, I was able to give Jessie (dog) a bath today. Yup, Jessie's still hanging in there. Deaf as a doorknob, hobbles around when her arthritis is bad, but still a happy dog.

It's been a very busy weekend. I saw J&L and baby C again yesterday, then went over to JJ's house to try to find some feral kittens whose mama had been hit by a car. Unfortunately we could not find them, despite looking in and under everything we could find. A couple times I thought I might have heard something, but I think it was just wishful thinking, as there wasn't anywhere around me where I didn't look! Sad, but at least we tried.

This morning I was up at the crap of dawn to take a couple birds to auction (I did not put the GDW's in the auction, but I did meet their buyer there). Came home, zonked out for 2 more hours, FINALLY finished the drawings for the CCA gun, whew! I have to say that my knowledge of the Wright Flyer(s) has increased exponentially versus what it was a week ago. So, images ready, approved, hopefully I can transfer them tomorrow. It's going to be soooo hard with all the detail in the Flyer. I made a new tool today with a pin vise and an insanely-finely-sharpened sewing needle. I need the thinnest point I can get for this! You know much it hurts to poke yourself with a sewing needle? Well imagine looking at it at 10X magnification and decided it looks too dull. Weird, yeah.

And then I worked on the zebra knife, which is coming along nicely.

This is how scrim looks before inking, if you get the light reflected just right (kinda like how the bulino engravings will look black even without ink):

And this is how far I got today:

And I am going to bed.

April 13 work in progress

Much of the day was spent doing preliminary stuff for the pistol grips, which I received today. I was recently asked by engraver Mike Dubber to do scrim on the grips for the annual Colt Collector's Association auction gun. I'll be the first to admit my knowledge of the gun collecting world is pretty small, but I do know that this is a big dang deal and I don't quite have the words to explain what an incredible honor it is. It will receive some pretty serious publicity, be published on the cover of Rampant Colt magazine, etc. The subject of the gun is North Carolina. On one side I'll be scrimming the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, and on the other will be the 1903 Wright Flyer. It's a big deal. :-)

But I did get in lots of hours on the knife too. You wouldn't think this stuff would take so long. But it does. First up was doing the transfer. I showed you the paper printout taped on there yesterday. Well first thing today was to poke through that printout on the outlines with my etching needle (lightly, but with enough pressure to make a tiny dot in the ivory). Put some ink on it, buff it down, and voila, the very subtle outline:

Next is the border, which I'd have to say is my least favorite part to do, because it's tedious. I measure and mark it in teensy increments under the scope, and then connect the dots with a whole heck of a lot more dots to build up a border (photographed through microscope):

And then play connect the dots with the zebra outlines so that I can actually see what I'm doing (eww, green fluorescent light):

You'll note I did not transfer the stripes or the water ripples. I'll just freehand all that. If I tried to transfer that much image information it would just be a hopelessly confusing mass of dots. So I just do the outlines and important parts, usually.

I wasn't nervous about starting this. I thought I would be, since this is my first knife and the first scrim I'm doing that isn't just on some random little bit of ivory. But nope, I feel totally confident in what I'm doing. This piece will be in color, so I am using India and colored drawing inks (well, so far just India). Not my favorite, I do prefer etching ink, but for a multi-color piece I need the drawing inks. Plus, because of the color and because this piece will get a fair amount of handling, it needs to be waxed (no, not like "rrrrrip oww!" waxing, I mean coated with a zillion layers of microcrystalline Renaissance Wax to seal the image and protect the ink, and etching ink can't be waxed til it's dry, which takes months, and I have barely weeks for this).

That's all I got today.