OWOH GIVEAWAY! WooHoo!

Yay! It's that time again - One World, One Heart 5th annual (and last, sigh....) Blog Giveaway! 
The purpose of the giveaway is for bloggers to meet other bloggers, make new friends and have fun!

For those who are new to my blog, I am a mixed media artist who is presently (as in this week) into metals and jewelry making.  I also enjoy working with glass, and I am learning to carve wood and bone.  I love power tools and collect them....now if i just knew how to use them!  (...some of them scare me...but that's another story....)  I live on Kauai in Hawaii....weather has been gorgeous this week....
This is what I will be giving away to one lucky winner.

It's not quite finished....it still needs the eye to be set and then to be polished but it's almost ready.   

To win the bracelet, all you have to do is leave a comment.  That's it!  Only one comment per person. BE SURE YOU LEAVE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS OR A WAY I CAN CONTACT YOU if you are the winner. You may post a comment from Jan 31st until Feb 17th.  On Feb 18th I will draw the random winner.  To visit other blogs (last year there were over 900! - and AMAZING things were given away!) please click on this link.

The bracelet is made from a vintage sterling silver plated serving spoon.  It is quite large...if your wrist is small, the bracelet can be squeezed tighter...  The finding is a vintage brass casting from the now out of business LeVay Glassworks at the Milton School House. Check them out!  The Levay studio was abandoned for 20 years and the space is now being converted into a home and various businesses.  But, the owners, Meredith and Joel, have discovered TONS of amazing art supplies and cool stuff.  They are selling what they find to pay for the extensive refurbishing Visit them at The Milton Schoolhouse. 

OK.  Back to the bracelet. It has 2 naked cherubs and looks very Victorian.  ....and of course the center is a doll eyeball set in a bezel made from a vintage watch part 

....because, as all my friends know, I collect and LOVE LOVE LOVE eyeballs.

ENJOY!  ...and be sure to visit the other blogs!

The Secret of the Mystery Molds.....

My latest obsession has been collecting vintage molds from the extinct Levay Glass factory housed in the old Milton Schoolhouse in Alton, Ohio.  The owners, Joel and Meredith are refurbishing the building and are selling beautiful glass artifacts found in the factory on ebay, and on etsy (Vivavivant) they sell the rubber and/or latex molds as well as objects found at the factory made from these molds and other supplies.  YOU HAVE TO CHECK THEM OUT ON FACEBOOK!
These molds were my big Christmas gift from Lance this year...they are round hard rubber 2 piece molds with multiple items in each mold.  I think they were made to be put on a machine and the pewter spun into them...i really haven't figured out how to use them yet.  I have about 15 of them!.....most of them are various tiny birds, but i have lambs, angels, cats, hearts, crowns,swans and a few figures.  I have tried polymer clay in them, but i haven't been very successful - yet......next i will try metal clay....

some of my molds.....
...and then there are the silicone molds...OH MY!

I have a HUGE 9 inch  angel head with wings, a hummingbird, all kinds of columns and bases, frogs, kneeling angels...and a bunch of mystery stuff.

Meredith asked me to cast 2 of the silicone molds to see if they were what she suspected they were....since these molds do not come all the way apart, you can't see what they are by just looking at them.So what could I do?  I was FORCED to try pewter casting.  I had a casting ladle Lance gave me about, uh, 15 years ago.....that I had never tried.  ...and i had bought lead free pewter scraps from Vivavivant.  But i didn't know diddly squat about what to do.....so i googled it.  I got a lot of demos, mostly bad or too complicated...and then I found a short you tube. It seemed pretty straight forward...... But was it dangerous?  would my melting pot ladle get hot?  did i need gloves?  how long did it take to melt?  would my torch be too hot?  could i over heat it?so i just DID it.  I had made some silicone molds of my own last week, so i tried them first - just in case the pewter melted the molds.

pewter in the casting ladle

melting the pewter with a plumbers propane torch

waiting for the pewter to cool...faster, faster!

my first pewter pieces demolded.  lots of overspill on these...but they do clean up fast....

a pewter spatter...

Now that I knew the silicone molds wouldn't melt, it was time to ...cast Meredith's mystery molds.

Meredith's mystery molds

The first mold came out quite clear.

YES!...you had this one right, Meredith...it's.......

the worlds tallest man...who went to school at THE MILTON SCHOOL HOUSE  before it was a glass factory......
The 2nd one....well it just looked like a weird roundish blob on a stand.....

see the roundy looking thing on a pedestal on the far right?  I couldn't figure out what it was either...that's the one made  from Meredith's mystery mold.  there are also 2 skulls, a small bird, a sea urchin shell and a face in the photo, from molds i made.  The hummingbird is a LeVay mold.
Maybe I had cast it badly, so I tried again.  I waited for it to cool.   But what was it?

front?

side

back
...and then i got the idea to turn it upside down...and woohoo - there it was!

MYSTERY SOLVED!
So sorry Meredith - I don't think it's a missing zodiac marble.....maybe the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland as a cabinet knob?  Pretty cool, anyway.