"Pimp My Hitch-Hiker," continued: I sit here spinning (on the Joy, which so far has resisted my temptations to gold leaf the daylights out of IT, too...) with fluff sticking to my varnish smears.
I have learned so much: the silver and gold of silver and gold (and copper) pens is not the same color as the metallic perfection of leaf. It won't be evident when the wheel is spinning, but no one will be encouraged to look closely at the flames when it's stationary.
And the leaf sealer varnish warns me it contains xylene, which means it is eating my kidneys while I am enjoying the industrial fug. Xylene is the solvent in gold, silver (and black and copper)pens. So when you dab leaf sealer over the flames, they smear. So you go back to the water-soluble varnish (which may tarnish the leaf), it beads up on the leaf.
The wheel as a whole looks like it had a rough trip out of the sack of Lhasa. I could pour more petrochemicals over it and scrape down. Or I could try leafing over the flames with my new idea: if you cut the flames out with your good scissors and maybe try applying the thick size gently into the stencil...then I would not need to touch up the flames with pens and I could just seal the whole thing.
Or I could ask David Paul how much a new part would cost and start with a fresh disk when I ask him to post a picture of the parts, exploded, to make it easier to put your Hitch-Hiker back together without the embarrassment of ending up with a handful of extra parts (Doug exercised his engineer mojo on it and we are okay now.
On the whole, I think I will be okay with it looking like it got kicked around a bit before Pier One marked it down. I don't know if I am growing up, or just had reasonably low expectations, or am finally on enough fluoxetine, but it's nice not to have wanted to throw either the wheel or myself out the window.
And I have a cheap tray and a cheap wooden box from Michael's to put more leaf on. The whole process has awakened me to how very little work it is to sand something after the varnish, if it is small and not a floor (I have been where the Harlot is, and the woman deserves a week at a spa), and if I could think of anyone who needed small furnishings that look like Revenge of the Raj I would be ready to go. I hope I can keep my hands off the Joys in the house. They are fine without gilding.
2 comments:
Maybe you could find a period examplar of something gilded to make and then offer it as a prize for some SCA competition or tourney.
I don't know - You could come and leaf my ....my.... cat?
The Pier one mark down description is the best thing I've read in a long time and you musn't throw yourself out the window, nor the wheel. Not ever.
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