April Art Elements Theme - Bees

One of our Bee images on metal prints - you can find in our Etsy shop

This month's Art Elements Theme is Bees.

Mom and I love making bee pieces and taking pictures of bees (We usually will take the pictures at the little hort park near my work, but haven't been there yet this year. I am not sure when I will get over there since we aren't supposed to go back to work until after June 30th, maybe). We have one customer who loves it when we have metal prints with bees as the images. I think she has bought all of our bee images and now she is working on purchasing the butterfly images. I think we only have one bee metal print left in our shop. The yellow one above just sold right before the lock-down.

Mom and I have made bee pendants and a bee necklace in the past. One of my former co-workers bought our bee necklace when she retired. That necklace is still one of my favorite pieces that mom and I made.

For this theme challenge mom and I decided to make a plate. But, we wanted to give the plate a three dimensional look, so we started off with the plate in two different pieces. So, here is the process.

We first had to find an image mom and I both agreed we liked. I found the image on Pinterest. Then mom prints off the image and makes a pattern (I am so glad she is good at this part because I suck!). Once mom has the pattern drawn out - we print it off again and then glue it to the copper.

The flowers were sawed out of a large piece of copper in the shape of a circle. The bee was glued onto a smaller piece of copper. I actually sawed out the perimeter of the circle. The rest was all mom because I have no idea what her plan of action was on the sawing. Plus mom wings it a lot when she saws. I DO NOT wing it - I must have a pattern. I am in my box, I stay in my box :)

Mom then files and sands the pieces before it is handed over to me for enameling. You can sort of see mom's dirty hands after filing the bee.

Before enameling I took a picture of the bee and plate and how mom wanted the bee placed on the plate for enameling. The way I enameled the two pieces together is the same way I enameled the piece for our February Art Elements Theme - Letters.

This is the first layer of enamel on the pieces. I enameled the circle plate backside first and I also enameled the backside of the bee first. I wanted to have that done before I had the fun part of connecting the bee to the plate. There was some sweating going on when I connected the bee, let me tell you.

This was the final enameling - I used my heavy iron to try and make sure the plate was flat. Mom and I still have not decided if we will display this piece in a shadow box or leave it as is. We are afraid you won't be able to see the the bee off the plate if it is in a shadow box. We are still playing.

So after all that I am sure you want to see the final piece.

Here you go:

I am really happy with the way the whole piece turned out.

I hope you enjoyed the process and the final piece.

Now go and enjoy what everyone else created for this month's theme!

AE team:

Niky

Sue

Jenny

Jen

Cathy

Marsha

Guests:

Tammy

Cat

Alysen

Kathy

Sarajo

Kelly

Evie and Beth

Hope