Coleus Mama for Alice in Sweden ~ Day 2

By Janet Colvin (UniQueTreasures) on April 8, 2010

It's a learning process for us each time we create a sculpture. If you can learn from our mistakes, then that's all the better!!! Most folks would say that we didn't accomplish doodly squat on Day 2. On the contrary, we feel that we scaled a mountain. So with that in mind, let's get on with the show...

Click on the play button to hear music as you read this article.

Well, ok, maybe not that big of an accomplishment, but when you see what we did figure out, you'll understand why I feel that way. Many more videos were taken than still shots, so rather than have all of that time be wasted, I will show you what DIDN'T work.

We started out Day 2 with hopes of creating a square stem for the Coleus Mama.

A while back, Connie ordered some square copper for another project.

While it is neat being square, it is too small in diameter to support the weight of her head.

So we had to come up with a way of creating a square stem that would support her neck and the weight of her head.

Word of caution: The sound in these videos is fairly loud. Between the air compressor, the nibbler itself and the torch, there's not much in the way of talking, but you can watch us work. I set the camera up on a tripod so we'd have more hands on and you'd see what happened. OK now that you've been warned about the noise...

This was the plan:

a) Pick out a piece of copper that the neck would fit into.

b) Cut that piece to be the correct length from her neck to her feet.

c) Straighten out the Copper Tubing

d) Cut strips of copper from a single sheet so that we could form a square stem to go around the round tube.

    1) We placed the copper under the edge of the table so we'd have a straight edge to cut along. First try and the copper moved too much without being clamped down.

    2) Connie cuts the copper strip to a more workable size.

    3) Connie measures the edges to be sure it will be a straight cut.

e)   That still didn't work, so we decided to move to an area where I could hold the copper still as she cuts the strips.

f)   Connie uses sand paper to clean off the copper tubing.

g)   We will need to tack the first strip to this tubing and then we'll be able to tack the strips together to form the square stem.

In theory, this would be have been perfect.

In reality, it might have worked, except that the square was really big
and we didn't think it would look right having that big square from her neck to her toes. 2010-03-25/UniQueTreasures/9928fe

So we scrapped that idea and went on to another phase of the project.

Choosing the style of leaves for the Coleus Mama. We took some videos while we worked on the leaves, but no matter what I did, I couldn't get them uploaded to Youtube. So, I'll tell you the processes we went through and you can watch the videos on the Phanfare site.

First off we cut out a leaf. It was plain and ordinary.... nothing at all like a coleus leaf. We talked about how the leaves should look. Decided that even though both Connie and I have had hundreds of coleus between us, that we'd best go Google some Coleus leaves. We want to get this right! We hoped that at least ONE of the coleus varieties would have leaves that were NOT ruffled. Oh no. Every single one we saw had ruffled leaves. Keep in mind that we will be cutting out 100+ leaves for this project. So we decided to try some experiments in faux ruffling. Connie used a punch type tool and hammer to try and create ruffles. That was ok, but not really the look we were after.

We tried another experiment. I held the leaf while Connie used the nibbler to "bite" into the edges of the leaf. That worked beautifully, but I couldn't take any videos and I forgot to take a photo of the final leaf.

If you'd like to see more, you can see the first article on DAY 1

If you'd like to watch the whole show from start to finish you can see my slide show on Phanfare.

If you'd like to watch the show and start at Day 2 double click on the large photo in this link and the show will start at Day 2.

Stay tuned. I'm not sure when the next installment will be, but most likely after April 15th. (I do taxes!)

About Janet Colvin
I love unique and unusual things. Connie and I create Copper Sculptures from new and recycled materials. I love thrift shopping and love a good bargain.

I'm married to a great guy, with 2 beautiful daughters and 4 incredible grandchildren and we live in Southeast Texas.

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Comments and discussion:

Subject Thread Starter Last Reply Replies

Coleus mama Alicesunne May 16, 2010 6:52 AM 5

You 2!!! Katg Apr 11, 2010 9:20 PM 10