SWIZ - Mugs 'n' Stuff....wall hanging.

👍 way cool !!

Thanks Or Got Rum and hottiki.

If they gave out awards for procrastinating then i would definitely be in the running. After posting back at the end of May last year a bunch of lamps i made i said that 'frames' would be next after i finished off a couple more. In that time from then until now i've made a few more lamps, some fish floats, and a couple of new mug designs (pics to come) and only today, finally finished a frame i've been working on for far too long, so without further ado, here's a bunch of picture frames, in no particular order, i've made for various things.

This frame was originally made to display swizzle sticks (I actually made two and repurposed the other one as well for something else). Although they looked good i just felt they took up too much wall space which i could use for other artwork so i removed all the sticks and added this "Witco" mask to it. (I was always led to believe it was a proper Witco but learned that it was most likely made by Tiki House Gift Shop who was an employee of Witco).

It looked a little plain like this so i added this background.

Here the carving was too similar in colour to the leopard skin fabric and got a little lost so i tried something else and the third time was the charm.

The following two are frames i made for some carvings i found at some thrift stores.

I bought a few original mini paintings off Candy Weil and when they arrived she had thrown this drawing in as an extra and i thought it deserved to be framed.

This was also an extra thrown in, along with a thank you note, from an artist on Instagram (fantasyincolours) who i also bought an original painting from. This little painting, around 2" x 3", came in a white card sleeve which i drew the tree/bark pattern onto with markers and then made a frame for it. I think it turned out great.

These next three i made because i hate Bob but others love him so i figured that the way people go nuts over all the different mug versions of him, maybe they'd want something different. Boy was i wrong. (I've only sold one :lol:).

Next is this swizzle stick pack/card i found on ebay. Something so incredibly cool definitely needed to be displayed properly.

Now when Oceanic Arts announced that they were closing back in late 2021 it really inspired me to do something with the pieces of Tapa i bought from there back when i visited in 2012. I bought a couple of square/rectangle pieces i planned to use for lamps (seen in previous posts) and a couple of round pieces. Here is the first one i made.

This second one was made at the same time (without the carving detail) but it took me ages to work out what sort of pattern to add to it. When the OA book arrived, there on the first page their logo was staring me straight in the face, so right then and there i knew exactly what to do. Well over 2hrs was spent routing all those logos onto the frame, and it looked quite rough until it was sanded, burnt and stained, but i'm very pleased with the result.

This was a print i actually bought very early on into my collecting/interest in Tiki and i found it rolled up in a tube in a box when i was looking for something so i whipped up a frame for it.

And last but not least, the frame that was holding up this post since May last year. I've never spent as much time on a frame as i did on this one, and all for what is just an average quality print (I.E. It's just printed on card, not a numbered and signed giclee or anything), but i think it turned out pretty good and was worth it in the end.

So that's it for frames i think, unless i've missed something that's slipped my mind because it isn't hanging on a wall somewhere around me at the moment. I've got a couple of new mugs to show but before those, i'll post what was my biggest project i've made next.

Cheers

swiz

EDIT: Okay. Going back through my thread i noticed i did miss something. Covid really messed with people's time. We all effectively 'lost' a couple of years and i didn't realize that this happened during that time, but i was fortunate enough to find some Chinese jade breezeway tiles here in Australia.

I got my hands on four and would have loved to have bought more but it was all i could afford at the time as they were interstate and i had to get a friend to pick them up and then post them to me (he got a few for himself as well).

I've done something with all four of them. One you'll see in my next post. Two of them are in 'kinda' a frame, (the idea was some sort of room divider) but i want to do more/add/change them, i'm not really sure at the moment, so i'll post those when i've worked it out.

And this is what i did with the final one (although i think this was the first one i did anything with). I'm really happy with how this turned out.

Ok. NOW that's it.

[ Edited by swizzle on 2023-03-08 03:10:47 ]

Your frames are beautiful works of art.

I like your ideas for frames.

I try to make them all different so it's a challenge coming up with new ideas. That's why the most recent one took so long.

Wow. Beautiful work! I wish I could procrastinate like that!

Thank you Wendy, MaukaHale and coldwarspacemonkey.

So i've been holding off on posting this because i wanted to post all the other stuff i've made over the past few years first. It's not the most recent thing i've made, i've made some lamps and frames which i've already posted plus i have a couple of new mugs to show, but this is the biggest project i have made, and it's something i've been wanting to do for quite a while.

These are the only WIP pics i took, just a simple frame to add to.

And here is the finished bar.

In my last post i posted one of the Chinese jade breezeway tiles that i framed and with the second (of four) i made what you see here. It was just something i made, it was not made for the bar specifically, but when it came to 'decorating' the bar, it just happened to be the ideal thing to put on the front and fit beautifully.

I would have loved to have lined the background of the bar with bac bac/sea grass type material but it is impossible to find here and it was just far too expensive to have sent from overseas, once postage had been added, so i had to think of some sort of alternative and found some bamboo rugs online that were a reasonable price. It's just bamboo slats attached to some backing material with fabric stitched around the edges that i trimmed to size. (I think the rug was around 8'x4' to start with).

I've had these port and starboard lamps that i made quite a while ago (and posted them when i did).....

.....and they were another thing that just happened to come in handy and coincidentally and unintentionally be used for a project that they perfectly suited. Here's a pic of them turned on (with the overhead light on) along with the LED lighting i added to the framed breezeway tile.....

.....without the LED and overhead lights on.....

.....and what they look like from the sides. (They are really bright. I have to see if i can attach a dimmer to them somehow).

The LED lighting i added to the frame of the breezeway tile is run by remote and has a heap of different settings from one colour to multiple colours, from static to flashing, and everything in between. As i can't add videos here to show some of the patterns it can run through, here's a bunch of pics of some of the static colour options. (I found a purple colour i like and just leave it set to that-the second pic).

And the only other pics i have are of the bar top. There's nothing really exciting going on behind the bar. There's a powerboard with individual switches attached for all the lights. A shelf on the left and an open area for a mini fridge on the right which you can see in the first couple of pics (although admittedly i did screw up and should have done some research first as i haven't been able to find a fridge that will fit, i should have looked at what a standard size is and made that space accordingly), and i added some detachable casters so that the bar can be easily moved around if required, as obviously it's quite heavy. Oh! And a 'last call' ships bell which you can see above the port light in the pic further back.

So here's some pics of the bar top.....

.....and where it sits in my lounge room.

So some new mugs to come, more lamps, and something else utilizing the cork fish floats i made recently.

Cheers swiz

[ Edited by swizzle on 2023-03-24 02:48:04 ]

That bar is nothing but fantastic! Holy crap, so much detail. Love everything about it!

Swiz built a bar!? I didn't think Australians drank alcohol! Nice job Swizzers.

Hey, that's pretty nifty.

Looks good! I really like the carved frames - and even your idea to frame the tapa & tiles. They came out really nice!

Thanks maulrat, ernimator, Hamo and bamalamalu. And Ernie, only a few of us drink, but it's only in tiny amounts.

Recently i posted some fish floats that i made that i intend to use in some lamps somehow but the main reason i made them was to make one of these.

Although there's no doubt i would have seen them somewhere before, it was really seeing them at the Kon Tiki in AZ where they were embedded in my mind (they have quite a few of them there). I got six bottles at a gin tasting i was at recently and made this one and contacted the gin makers to see if i could purchase another couple of empty bottles off them and they were kind enough to send them to me free of charge so i've made another one exactly the same. Now i just need to find a spot to hang them.

[ Edited by swizzle on 2023-04-04 07:04:43 ]

Great page Swiz

Nice to see the room photo too

That's a really fun tiki space you have going there. You always make fun projects too. Well done!

Thanks hang10 and Wendy.

So i vended at the I Hart Rum festival here again this year (it was postponed about five times because of Covid) and not only did i want to have a new mug to offer i also figured i should finish off the sculpt i started 4/5/6 years ago, i can't even remember when it was (i did say i procrastinate), and the result is Ringo.

Sold all these at the event.

And made these just recently. (Brown one is sold).

And as the cliche goes, when it rains it pours, so even though Ringo was my newest design in about a year i also made several other new mugs/designs at the same time.

I have a particular design in mind that is going to be based on the shape of a fogcutter mug and whilst i was working on that (and still am) i realized i could use that basic shape as a base and play around with it and here's what i came up with.

These were the very first three (from L-R)......

.....and then i made these (in no particular order - including the cats).

One of my customers at I Hart Rum said i should make a mug with a cat on it and although i told her there were already a few designs around i remembered i had a cat mold at home and came up with these.

Also made a few of these to fill the kiln but only the one with the blue is left. I did also make a few of my older designs but they sold.

If any of the mugs pictured above interest you then send me a message and i'll let you know what is still available.

Until the next post,

Cheers

swiz

[ Edited by swizzle on 2023-05-03 05:00:45 ]

[ Edited by swizzle on 2023-05-03 05:11:52 ]

Outrageously cool mugs !!!

I'm quite impressed by your talent and skill. Those are all top-notch!

Sweet

Excellent clay work...well done.

I had someone message me via my Etsy store asking if i could make them one of my volcano bowls they had seen, and although i don't like repeating glaze combinations i obliged with this one because i used a fat lava glaze on the volcano. The one they had sent me a picture of had a metallic glaze volcano.

And because there's only a couple of pieces to pour to make one i decided to make another and a scorpion bowl while i was at it. I can fit three of these into my kiln (plus a few other small things) so it saved me firing the kiln with just one piece in it.

I also fired this grey version of my PNG style wall hanging (the green one was from a previous firing) and a bunch of pendants i still need to bead up.

Both the bowls and the wall hangings are up for grabs. Send me a message if you're interested in any of those pieces.

Cheers

swiz

[ Edited by swizzle on 2023-08-07 01:26:03 ]

As usual, life gets in the way so i haven't being doing too much on the art front. I've beaded up a few pendants, which i actually poured at the start of the year, and still have a handful to go. I'm just waiting on the beading wire to arrive.

Then i finished my version of this Oceanic Arts lamp. It's a lot smaller than the original and for something that is fairly basic looking, it was possibly the most time consuming lamp i've made, but i'm super happy with it. When i took this pic i didn't have a colour changing globe in it.....

.....but this is the colour i went with in its location in relation to the lamps around it.

Then i re-made this lamp. If you go back through my thread you'll see what it looked like originally, (page 9) and although i can't say i was super happy with it, it was the way it looked lit up i really didn't like. No matter what colour i had the globe set it, it just looked, well, shit!

I've only poured epoxy twice before. The first time it didn't set/cure properly (from memory it was a bad batch). The second pour worked and i still have those results which i'll use in a lamp someday. Besides a small leak, which i was able to seal and know why it happened, the only issue i had with this pour was some bubbles developing, which you can't really see, when i put it out into the sun to cure faster due to my impatience (it was actually looking ok when i woke up in the morning after it curing overnight and i'm sure would have been perfect if i had of left it). This pour taught me a lot for any epoxy pours i may do in the future.

I'm really happy with how this lamp looks now although i am yet to hang it as i'm not sure where to put it at the moment so i don't know what colour setting i'm going to go with, so what you see below is just me playing around with the various settings.

That's it at the moment. Summer is here again so i've been pouring mugs although there's nothing really new to show. I do have (several) new designs i've been working on but until they're done i won't be showing any preview pics.

Cheers swiz

P.S. Haha. After proof reading/checking this latest post i realized i didn't post the two other lamps i made that are in the same pic as the OA lamp.

Here's the first one.....

......and the other one. I actually started this one a long time ago but only had half an idea of what i was going to do with it. The 'ring' is actually part of a wine bottle rack i bought a long time ago, knowing i could use it for something Tiki'ish'.

.

[ Edited by swizzle on 2023-12-31 02:56:59 ]

[ Edited by swizzle on 2023-12-31 03:00:53 ]

Monster post Man.

You got it going on.

DUDE!! You are KILLING IT! Your lamps look awesome!

You sure have a lot of skills with lamps, frames and ceramics. Every item is a real work of art. It's fun knowing you.

Thanks for the compliments Will, GROG and Wendy.

Winter here in the land down under so it's been far too cold to do any work outside so not much has been happening. I do have a few mug sculpts in the works that i need to finish and can do inside (if i got off my arse) but the molds would have to wait for better weather anyway.

The only thing i've finished since the last batch of mugs i fired (which i just realized typing this is that i haven't posted those) is the PNG style wall hanging. I started this at the same time as the one pictured on page nine but the pieces got buried under a bunch of stuff and then when i found them it took me a while to figure out what to do for the background directly behind the mask.

I ended up using a aqua/turquoise hessian to match the paua shell eyes and make it pop. This piece is for sale if anyone is interested. Send me a message for details.

Cheers

swiz

[ Edited by swizzle on 2024-07-04 04:03:36 ]

GROG like!