Mother Earth – Element 1

I keep going back to playing with color just for the artistic possibilities color adds to the woodturner’s tool palette.  With this piece I was striving for a marble look. I think I got that and figured out a few techniques in the process that I will use in the next piece. And since it was just a practice piece anyway I had something else to try. I had picked up some hemp twine to try insetting a band of that. That was a failure on this pot. I used CA glue to glue the string in but it wicked though causing big blotches so then I tried to color the string with water based dye which only looked nasty when I got done. Next week I am going to pull all that out and dry again with a clear glue of some sort. I really want to perfect this technique because the texture is just wonderful against the high gloss finish. The purple heart rim is another nice accent. If I replace the string I think this piece will be a keeper.

Update: old title “Experiment in marbleizing”. I got this one fixed now. The trick I found was to use super glue gel which won’t weep into the hemp twine. The third time was gold. I also found some multi-colored hemp which had the other colors of the urn already in it. Sweet! I call this one “Mother Earth“