Gilding, molding and spray painting.

Now we have done our last time in the classroom and it is time for us to go out on our internships. This semester we have studied the courses gilding, casting and spray painting. Time has really flown away! It feels so weird to pack your stuff (read billions of things) and not see each other again until the fall. I just got started?

We have learned everything from laying imitation gold and 24k gold, glass gilding, building frames, making our own molds, testing lots of different casting materials and more modern techniques such as spray painting. It has been so much fun and I have learned so many new techniques! I really liked gilding. Especially on glass! It's a bit like painting but with gold leaf and various metals on glass. And molding. So much fun you can do with molding. I don't know what happened, but I've had some kind of banana theme at my bench. Our first task in molding was to make our own form of any object we'd like. The first thing I saw was my banana laying on the bench (that I would have for the 14 o'clock coffee break) and then I thought I could make a form of that one. Just for fun. Once I've made the molding form for the banana I poured in plaster and got a really good plaster banana! Over time, I had suddenly made 10 bananas that I both gilded and decorative painted. They became super fun! Bananas make me happy for some reason (more pictures of all bananas will be coming soon). You could say I went totally bananas.

Here are some pictures from our last semester.

Half a mold of my banana.

A gilded banana! (24k gold)

The beginning of a banana painting.

Finished banana with painted marble.

We learned how to build frames and lay different imitation leafs. Here are two tests with brass and oxidized brass.

Close-up of another frame I made. Here with oxidized copper. (How beautiful isn't oxidized copper?)

Experiment with oxidized brass and copper on plaster eggs.

A first sketch of a project in shadow technique.

Finished result painted with pigment and oil.

We learned how to spray paint with spray gun. Here I freshened up an old child chair.

This is what it looked like before. Worn and old.

This is how it turned out afterwards. With the help of a little sandpaper, primer and a swing in the spray box. All old brush strokes and worn edges are gone and now it has a really durable and shiny surface. As new!

Glass gilding. Here, a foundation is laid with white gold on glass (when it's finished, it will look like mirror glass).

Drew a little blackbird on the back with a scalpel.

And on this glass I scraped out a pattern in 24k gold.

My little workbench with various eggs, bananas, frames, moldings and stained glass.

Homemade frame with golden eggs and stained glass in white gold and gold.

I will really miss spendning time at that bench! But all the fun doesn't end here!

Next week I will go to Stockholm and do my first internship with the decorative painters Alexander and Veronica (www.dekorationsmalarna.se). They are crazy talented at decorative painting! I'm so incredibly thrilled about joining them at their work for a couple of weeks! Feel free to follow me on instagram where I will share some glimpses from my practice there and all the cool stuff that they make. Hope to see you there! :)

The tile chair - RUT

Last winter, I worked on a different project beside my regular studies at school. Every year Tibro's craft academy collaborates with Art college in Gothenburg, where their design students create a detailed sketch of a chair that the students at our school later on builds into a physical chair.

From Tibro's craft academy this semester, it was Nils and Lovisa (from the special carpenters) who sawed all the pieces for the chair, and put it together at the end and I (from decor painting) and Kajsa (from gilding) made sure to paint it according to their wishes.

This is what the design students' sketch looked like:

The tiled chair RUT! Pretty cool, huh? It may not be a chair I would have in the living room myself. But imagen how cool it would be to have it in a bathhouse or similar. Or maybe at the bottom of a pool?

While the carpenters sawed all parts, I took the opportunity to test different types of "tile paint" on smaller test plates. They wanted the tiles to look crackled so I tested with different varnishes that made the color crack. As well as with different base colors. We also experimented with different type of imitation gold and silver leafs in the foundation. But then the tiles got a completely different expression that didn't suit the chair. Kajsa focused on finding the right black color and structure for the hook and the newspaper stand. The design students wanted them to look like cast iron with a slightly coarser structure.

Here are four different tests. I think I made about 15 tests before we made up our mind.

We decided that we wanted white lacquered top paint with a slightly broken white base paint in the cracks. Then it was just to let the party get started! The carpenters came in with all the pieces and then it was time to polish, paint, polish, paint, then apply the crackling varnish, polish again and then end with a few layers of lacquer paint.

About half of all the pieces of the chair that we were about to paint.

Malin in my class came in as a saving angel and helped to grind and paint the pieces (they were many!).

This is how the surface turned out in the end. I didn't have any good pictures from the "crackling stage".It was a bit difficult to capture it in picture as it takes a few hours for the varnish to be activated. When all the pieces were painted, the carpenters putted them all together. And voila! We had a chair!

Malin and I in action.

Final touches.

And there she is! Little RUT:

Portable newspaper stand and "café table".

Hanger with "cast iron look" (which Kajsa has painted).

What do you think? I think it looks kind of cool! Modern and old school at the same time. Far from a traditional cozy armchair (although it is actually very comfortable to sit in).

It was so fun to take part of this process. From seeing the first sketch and then to be involved in creating the final product. Especially when you get to collaborate with several different educations / schools in this way. And I have to say that it turned out very similar to the sketch, don't you think?

This chair (and a lot of other cool stuff) will be displayed at an exhibition in Mölndal in May. More info about that coming up soon.

Artist of the month at Printler.

You who have hung out with me here for a while know that I previously ran my own webshop and printed and sent my posters and prints myself directly to my dear customers. Then life took a little tango. We got a baby girl, moved to a new city and I started studying full time at Tibro's craft academy. All of a sudden there was not enough time and I chose to close my webshop and sell through other retailers instead. As with Printler for example! I am SO happy about this collaboration. It feels so safe to know that my illustrations are really handled by professionals. They keep a close eye on everything that has to do with the printing process, use paper of the highest quality and are sent nicely packaged with care to the customers.

And you know what? Right now I am the artist of the month at Printler! Feel free to have a look at their website to read more. Right now they also have up to 30% off on all posters and prints if you use the code "SPRING21" when you arrive at the checkout. (Read more here.)