Lessons Barnabas Collins Taught Me

Happy Halloween!

Tonight I'll be kicking back with my favorite spooky/creepy videos in honor of Halloween: Dracula, The Wolfman, The Mummy...the originals from the 1930s and 1940s, not any of the remakes.

And my favorite guilty pleasure of all time, Dark Shadows.  Ah, the cursed Collins family, residing in the creepy mansion in New England.  Along with vampires, ghosts, werewolves, and witches.  Good times.

So here's my salute to Dark Shadows.  Happy Halloween, everyone!

Lessons Barnabas Collins Taught Me

1.  All doors leading to bad situations creak loudly.  If you hear a creaking door, head the for nearest exit.

2.  If the vampire's human accomplice offers to spare your life if you join them, sign on for the team.  It'll buy you some time to work on Plan B.

3.  If a ghost warns you to stay away from the basement because there's danger there, take her advice and stay away.  After all, she's trying to help.  And the basement might be where she became a ghost in the first place.

4.  Never call the sheriff and tell him to meet you in 15 minutes because you have something incredible to tell him.  Go straight to his office and tell him right away.  Better yet, do your research in his waiting room.  There's safety in numbers.

5.  If a stranger -- who looks exactly like an ancestor in a painting on your wall -- shows up at the door claiming to be a long lost cousin, carbon date the lint on his suit.  Be especially suspicious if he follows up "Hello" with a request to occupy a house located on the estate grounds.

6.  If the town doctor finds a body drained of blood with two tiny tooth marks in the neck and wonders aloud about the cause of death, get another doctor.

7.  If you take a job as a governess with an odd family living next door to a vampire, just remember that bad things happen to other people but governesses live until the end of the story.

8.  If you walk into the basement of the house next door and find a man lying in a coffin, run for the nearest exit.

9.  If you notice an odd resemblance between yourself and a portrait hanging in the oldest house on the estate, do not accept any invitations to dinner, tea, seances, or any other events taking place after sundown.

10.  If you are engaged to be married to an heiress and a beautiful witch announces that she wants you to marry her instead, drop to one knee a propose.  It'll save a whole lot of trouble later on.

Finally, here are a couple of videos.

Willie Loomis breaks into the Collins family crypt and finds Barnabas Collins.



The Dark Shadows spoof, "Misty Dawn."

Creating Patterned Wire with a Rolling Mill

This is an update to my last entry where I posted images of an experiment I made of patterning metal with a rolling mill using handmade paper.  I decided to try patterning wire using the same techniques.  I chose heavier gauge wire since any pattern on thinner gauges - such as 20 or 24 gauge - probably wouldn't show very well.

The Paper

Here's the paper I chose for both tests.  I wrapped each section of wire in two layers of the paper before running it through the rolling mill.

White Fiber Paper

Sterling Silver Square Wire

For this run, I used 18 gauge sterling silver square wire to see whether the wire would hold its shape.

18 gauge Sterling Silver square wire

The square wire held its shape pretty well, the edges displaying only slightly rounded curves.  The inside strip did pick up a slight pattern, but nothing very dramatic.

Copper Round Wire

For this second run, I chose 12 gauge copper round wire.  I used the same style paper I used on the silver wire above.

12 Gauge Copper Round Wire

The pattern on this wire was much more dramatic than the smaller 18 gauge.  This wire showed much more flattening than the lower gauge wire, however.

Conclusions

The heavier the wire - like most applications I've tried for texturing metal - the better the texture shows in the design.  Heavier wire flattens more readily than the lower gauges, so you may have to select which feature you need for your project - heavy patterning that's flat, or light patterning which retains the shape of the wire.

If you've tried you own experiments along these lines, let know how they came out!  Post a comment below or send some photos and/or urls, and I'll post them. 

Thanks,

Teresa

Creating Patterns on Metal with a Rolling Mill

I've seen references in several books about using handmade papers to create patterns on metal by running them through a rolling mill.  So I decided to give it a try to see if it would work, with mixed results.  Here are descriptions of how I created the patterns, the type of paper I used, and my comments on how well it worked.

The Rolling Mill

For those who've never encountered a rolling mill, here's a photo:


[From Wikimedia Commons]

Used for cold metal forming, a rolling mill contains two rollers through which metal is passed in order to texture or flatten it.  The two wheels on top adjust the height of the rollers which affects the pressure applied to the metal.  The T-bar on top turns the wheels to adjust the rollers.  The crank handle on the left side is used to turn the rollers to pass metal through them.

To get the patterns below, I cut a piece of the paper twice the width of the metal, then folded the paper around the metal sheet.  I tightened the rollers until I could just start to feel some resistance when I started to push the paper-wrapped metal between the two rollers.  Then I cranked the handle to send the metal through the rollers.

First Test

This paper had a wrinkled pattern to it but felt pretty sturdy.  I picked this up at The Paper Source in Nashville. 

Crinkled Paper

Here's what I got once I put the paper and some 24 gauge copper scrap through the rolling mill together.  The pattern was very subtle, sort of a pebble-y texture.  It would probably do well as a foundation that you could build upon.

Textured Copper - Pebble Pattern

 Second Test

This paper had a leaf pattern.  You could actually feel the leaves through the paper, so I though it might work well for patterning.  I picked this paper up at Plaza Art.

Leaf Paper

Much better.  The leaf pattern transferred clearly to the copper sheet.  Might be interesting to try an actual leaf!

Textured Copper - Leaf Pattern

Third Test

This paper had clearly visible fibers running through it.  You could feel the fibers in the paper when you touched it.  I picked this up at Plaza Art.

White Fiber Paper

Also a very nice transfer.  You can see the track of the fiber through the metal.

Textured Copper - Thread/Fiber Pattern

Fourth Test

My friend Shore loaned me some handmade Japanese-style paper from her scrapbooking supplies.  Thanks, Shore!

Sorry, no photo of the paper, but here are some of the results.

Textured Copper - Fine Lines and Swirls

Textured Nickel - Fine Lines and Swirls

Conclusions

The best paper had physical texture, fibers you could actually feel just by laying your hands on the paper.  The white fiber and leaf paper examples above are good examples of this.  But even subtle textures, like the crinkled paper in the first test, could produce some texture on metal.

The Evil White Page

Asked occasionally for instructions for some of my craft projects - and not having a central location to put them - I decided that a blog (translation: free) might be the best solution for this problem.  Then I cast about for some way to introduce myself and the blog.  I searched other blogs for inspiration.  I read articles on how to start blogs, how to attract readers, and so forth.  I thought about what I could offer: craft techniques I'm studying, tutorials on making specific projects, etc.

Then the doubts started.  There are others (legions, in fact) of other people making better stuff than me.  And their instructions are better.  And they are better writers.  They are certainly better photographers.  The list goes on and on.

Then I had a revelation.

As long as one person learns a new technique or gets a spark of an idea from what they read here, does it matter how many others pass it by?

Then I had another revelation.

The empty white page is scary...and evil.  It was every essay exam come back to haunt me.  It was Dracula appearing from the shadows.  The Hound of the Baskerville's pursuing me across the moor. 

Hence my rambling first post.  I'll try to improve as time goes on. 

- Teresa