3 April, 2020 – 10:00 am
To those of you who have just found me, welcome.
This year I am celebrating 15 yrs in business. It was set to be my best year ever and although these are worrying times for all self employed people, I am keeping myself busy with work around my home and garden as well as working from home carving.
My workshop is at a craft centre between the Forest of Dean and South Wales. It is obviously closed at the moment but I am going there once a week to work on the few commissions that I have left to finish. I do house-names and numbers as well as animal and people portraits, sculptures for your home and garden. During the school holidays I normally run activities and at the moment I have an almost 4 tonne block of Forest of Dean sandstone lying outside my workshop waiting to be stood up so that I can get on with my most prestigious commission, a war memorial for the parish of Mitcheldean and Abenhall.
I am currently renovating a garden shed, it was grotty, rotten shelves, rat droppings, fresh rat holes and lots of spiders, My boyfriend and I dismantled the shelves with the help of my trusty dremel and a multitude of screwdrivers and my cordless drill driver. Once this was all done I used my workshop hoover to suck away all the cobwebs and years of grim dust.
When I removed the rotten random pieces of wood that were on the floor I found a quarter of the floor had bricks laid so I decided to finish it with bricks, initially I was going to lay concrete but we’re in lock-down I can’t get concrete for a home project.
Popped to my studio and carved a house number on a piece of Welsh slate, painted the house sign that I carved last week and brought some more supplies home to kit out my home working shed. (I was on my own and it’s only up the road)
The good thing about being a stonemason is that I have things like lime and stone dust, I also have a partially gone off bag of ciment fondue-it’s no use for what I bought it for but I can use it for the rat holes. I have a wall to re-point where the shed is built up against the old brick privy. The rats have dug deep holes in one corner so I’m going to fill that with rubble from previous carvings and then put the ciment fondue down there.
I had been taming the brambles and Ivy last week and found a cache of bricks so I dug these out. There were lots of full bricks and lots of half bricks, it was apparent that there wouldn’t be enough whole bricks so what I had went in the middle of the floor. Goodness me that is hard work, I did dig the floor to try and level it but my back really isn’t up for digging so although the floor will be flat, it won’t be level.
My shed is coming on really nicely. From a spider infested, rat holes floor and rotten shelves it now has a brick floor. Just got to put the 2nd coat of paint on, re-point some of the joints in the brick wall and lime-wash it.
I have also been carving a Hare out of a piece of French limestone, this is the carving that has featured on my Youtube channel. I’m going to finish this carving today and my next project will be a face of a woman with a side plait in a piece of Tetbury limestone.
If you would like to purchase anything I will be uploading more pictures of what I have available to buy from my shop, I can take credit card payments over the phone and post your purchase out to you. Obviously this is within reason.
I also have a stock of stone in my workshop so if you would like to commission anything please get in touch. I am still working and with my home-working shed almost finished it will be even easier to get on with my work.
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These Welsh slate house signs are in the process of being painted and eventually gilded. I also use Forest of dean Sandstone and Cornish slate.
Stay safe everyone and thank you for reading.
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