Category Archives: garden

I made a fish!

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And who could stop with just one? Not me.

A shark, ray, and several other fish made from wire

For scale, the sheets of paper behind the fish are 11x17.

Unlike the birds, I decided to twist the two ends of the wire together to make a single wire to stick into the ground. Partly because I can’t have two wires, imitating legs, and partly because trying to get two different pieces of wire into the ground at the same kind is annoying.

I posted more pictures of the wire birds on Flickr. Like this one:

Little wire bird in the garden

Early in the season, pansies and daffodils and other miscellanous plants help hide the little bird.

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I made a bird!

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Bird silhouette made from wire

Bird silhouette made from wire, ready to be stuck in the ground

I can’t entirely remember where the idea came from, but a few days ago I started thinking that I could probably make bird silhouettes using the 19 gauge stainless wire I have around, and use them to mark where some of my plants are. Especially the bulbs, which are starting to go dormant. I already made some other plant markers using 14 gauge (?) wire, but that’s rather hard to work with compared to this thin stuff; I can work the thin wire mostly by hand.

The previous plant markers are spirals and loops and things, and I am bored with them, and I like birds, so, a couple rough sketches of birds were enough to get me started, and then as I was bending it, it took the final shape.

Sketches for wire birds; wire-bending tools

Serious tools for serious wire, plus sketches

I very nearly grabbed my good jewelry-making tools, but remembered in time to go get the normal tools, because they can handle steel wire without being harmed.

Silhouette of a bird

Silhouette of a bird; the shapes behind it are sketches for a necklace on another piece of trace paper

Sketch of a bird silhouette

Sketch of a bird silhouette. Very cute. I think this one will be next.

Now I am thinking of ways to suspend a piece of beer can, cut in a wing shape, inside the silhouette; the aluminum is soft enough to “write” on (make an impression, really) with a ballpoint pen, so the wing could serve as a plant label. I’d probably need to add more wire (maybe thinner gauge) to suspend the wing/label, and that might ruin the lines a bit. We shall see.

Oh! While I am thinking about it: this weekend I (re)added a couple of ways to subscribe to the blog, meaning, get an annoying email letting you know an update has occurred; the options are in the right column here on the main blog, but they will not show up in the syndicated feed on LJ. The Add to Any button will also let you get an update through about a million zillion other ways, too, in addition to email (Netvibes, um, uh, stuff). At the present time, the update email will only send a short excerpt from the post, not the whole thing.

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