Hand Made Wooden Earrings & Pendants with Painted Canvas Inserts

I’ve been creating Walnut, Red Oak and Padauk Earrings and Pendants with unique Painted Canvas inserts. They are light. Each pair is handmade and unique.

I start by cutting solid hardwoods such as Maple, Red Oak, Walnut and Padauk into strips. Then earring and pendant blanks are laser cut from these strips. I then create a painting that will be used to laser cut the canvas inserts from. Finally everything is assembled, finished with varnish and Sterling Silver findings attached. Ear Hooks and Jump rings for the earrings and Jump rings with cotton cord for the pendants.

Monet Cowboy Mosaic

I’ve been exploring creating mosaics these past two years. This second 20”x20” mosaic was created from a photo of a friend of mine wearing a cowboy hat. The mosaic colours were chosen from a palette that Monet used in his garden paintings. A significant amount of time is spent photo editing and choosing the best colours to achieve the artistic result I am looking for. There were seven versions that I experimented with before settling on this particular version.

My process, as usual, is technical. It took about 4 months to write an application to convert photographs into a mosaic using a specified set of colours.

Hand assembling a 1600 or 3600 piece tile is time consuming (40+ hours) so this application was modified to consolidate all contiguous tiles of the same colours into one shaped “tile”. This results in large reduction of assembly time.

Each 1/8” thick Baltic Birch panel is painted with acrylic paint for the specific chosen colour in the mosaic. “Tiles” are then cut out using a laser cutter. Each panel is covered in green tape before cutting to prevent smoke damage from the laser. This tape is peeled after laser cutting.

Next comes the hand assembly. Each tile is glued in its correct place using wood glue to the wooden base. The assembly process takes place over three days.

Assembly of Mosaic.

Included here are some of the “boring" technical details for those who may be interested. I used the creation of my Mosaic Photo Application as an opportunity to learn a new programming language called Rust Programming language. This particular language has a steep learning curve and it took about me about four months before I had anything useful. Developing this application using Python would have been much faster. My contiguous tiles modification involved learning edge tracing, bin packing, depth first searching, and a deep dive into the SVG specification. This modification took another three months of development effort.

Thoughts April 9 1992 -

Thoughts                                                                                                         April 9, 1992 

4 rows back on a comfortable Greyhound bus watching the road slip away in a reflective way she sits in the driver's rear view mirror lost in thought. Chez 106 fades in and out on the air waves as I seem to fade in and out. Flicked a switch and everything seems perfectly loud and clear.   I need to find that switch in my life!  What are you watching?   I see the road, 4 cars in front, jockeying for position.  In a hurry?  Perhaps just competing. Fighting for a place in life.  Not fast enough? Move over and let me by.  I’ll leave you in the dirt!  Depressing.

“In Defence of Logical Thought”. The two cultures. Artist and Scientist. I am and always will be a logical thinker.  Yet I have been exploring my artistic side.  Exploring myself through art.  Art is just an expression of myself.

Life around me now. A man reading an exercise magazine (technical & intellectual). No glossy pictures of Golden Pecs, Breasts or Butts. Afraid of his heart. Afraid of dying? Looking for Love. Preppy green cords + pinstripe white + blue shirt, mens cologne, manicured hands. What I am afraid of becoming. A man.  “Une Morte de Propagande”, a goatee, a ponytail in a purple hair bungee, glasses, white shirt + blue jeans, black socks and black doc like leather shoes practices foot massage on an older motherlike woman across the aisle.

Getting down to the bus was stressful. Packing, unpacking, repacking. Should I take this? Leave that? I want to travel light yet be prepared for every contingency.  Just passed Herbs candy striped Restaurant and Service Station on the 417.  Gotta go in there some day to eat and check out the place.  Stop by the roadside and see what life has to offer.  Also thought about pride. Very few people seem to take pride in their work.  There is no national sense of pride.  If we taught our children pride.  Our children become us so we should make ourselves as we can… 

Listening to French Radio.  Seems to have a different rhythm.  The signal gets stronger as we get closer to Montreal. Listening to a Walkman really takes me to another world. Why must our existence in this world be the only one? Let your imagination free.  The real world looks flat after VR.  Is the symptoms of a drug addiction.  Smart Drugs, Smart Food, Smart Exercise, Smart Sex, Smart, Smart, Smart…  Just leaving you smarting. Orchestral music - somehow great + prideful. But perhaps Pride is harmful.  This writing is losing it. Uninspired. Disconnected, no purpose. Nothing to express.  Just a path in the sand traced by the slow swings of the pendulum of time. Somehow seeming permanent yet blown away by time as if in a violent storm.  Where have 29 years gone? It seems as if I have gone nowhere and that there are many places left to go.  I have not celebrated my life. I have held no ritual for myself. I have not become a man - (responsible).  The Little Prince.  My mind travels through many worlds. It is an active mind. Unfocussed mind. Gotta find that occupation or calling that will focus my mind + focus my passion.  The power of the little prince is Flying. <- Freedom. Analysis of our myths, fairy tales, dreams.

What do I dream about? Do I let myself dream? Dream and I shall come to pass. Become aware of your surroundings physically and emotionally.

Ciao for Now - Coming into Montreal.