Mary Ostler

. I have been a little busy and /or sick for the last little while. I do have stuff to post, but am waiting for some final finishing. Sherbert the Entari is slowly chugging along. Its possible it will be done for investiture, but I am starting to doubt it. I didn’t kill my Mulberry [...]

Experimenting with Purple Heart dye. Having collected a bunch of wood sawdust, I decided to try making a usable dye from purple heart. I first separated the sawdust into two piles. The first pile I left steeping on the stove making a dark reddish tea. Many more pictures after the jump

The big push is on. I will be leaving on Friday for Avacal/Tir Righ war. My deadline for finishing this project was this event, so I needed to get on with it. All of the side panels have been cut out, carved, primed and painted. Sides and doors with the heraldic badges painted in bright [...]

  So the long and trying road has finally winded to the end. The bed is done. This project was a fairly ambitious project for myself.  The whole thing needed only a fairly simple skill set, but its a marathon of time and patience.  I have a severe backlog of projects I need to do [...]

Milk Paint from kitchen spice From top to bottom. Chili powder, Wasabi, Turmeric & Mustard Powder

Did a bit more experimenting with dyes for milk paint.  I have no problem with getting  Blacks, Oranges, or Yellows but am having an ace of a time getting a decent red for my rope bed. Saffron, Brazil Wood, Turmeric, Red Oxide, Carbon Black, Red Saw Dust in Isopropanol,Red Ainiline Dye, and a Black Ainiline [...]

Since I have been playing around with milk paint, I decided to try my hand at making my own milk curds. I don’t want to muck about with cooking, so the test will be done at room tempature. 1L skim milk (.4%mf, and three days from expiry date) apple cider vinegar  5.5%a.acid (all i had) [...]

The skid scrap chest is heading towards the finish line. I painted the whole thing with milk paint stained with tumeric. My test pieces of the milkpaint stain has shown a fair amount of fading, but I just wanted to get this thing done. Once I got one good coat on I did a coat [...]

I decided to give my dust filled lungs a bit of a vacation day, so I chose to play with milk paint instead. I have been playing a little bit for the last week or so, but today was what I consider day one of the experiment. I managed to finally find Hydrate Lime yesterday. [...]

Got a bit more done on the Skid wood chest.  I now have the two ends done, and a front panel. I have ran out of the ripped slats, and will have to rip a whole slew more tomorrow. Thinking I will dado the bottom board and recess the front and back panels. Saw a [...]