A Foraging Trip and a rant

The trip out this week whilst pleasant turned into more of a forage than anything else.

The hedgerows are heavy with berries. I picked more hawthorn to replenish my stocks as well as the ubiquitous blackberry. Plenty of sloes there too but I've made the gin for this year and have no use for more berries. Rosehips and Elder berries were also left. I'm just not going to have time this year to do anything with them

I also picked up some immature acorns and hazelnuts that had dropped from the trees as well as some larch cones. I wanted some this week and couldn't believe that I hadn't any left.

Finally one hedgerow was festooned with byrony berries. I have long wanted to try and grow this climber in the garden so I picked a few to have a go. I'm not sure I'll be successful as I've never seen any growing around here but it is worth a try.

Finally the rant. WTF does our neighbour  farmer think he is doing putting a combined chicken run and pigsty right up against the side of our house? I'm not going to be able to open one of the windows now for the smell and the flies. Not happy at all. 

A Dark Mirror

I've wanted one of these for ages but the commercial ones are horribly expensive and I'm not that much into mass produced gothic resin either. I'm a believer that tools should be beautiful objects in their own right  and should be  hand made wherever possible by me.  

So back to the mirror. 

All you need is a picture or photo frame of your choice and some matt black paint.

Secondhand ones from charity shops are very cheap or you may already have one.  Although normally I would "recycle" an old one I chose to buy a new one for this exercise ( for various  reasons) but it was  half price in a clearance sale and a nice oakwood frame.

The first task is to disassemble the frame and remove the glass.

I painted one side of the glass with matt black spray paint and after some thought decided to paint the frame black too. It tool several coats but I ended up with this.   

The essential thing  when reassembling is to have the painted surface at the back and the unpainted shiny side of the glass on the outside.

You can see how reflective this is.

 If you like plain and simple the mirror is done! 

I wanted to add some decoration and some symbolisation that is personal to me. I decided I wanted a woodland theme with ivy creeping around the mirror but the possibilities are endless. I might do another one with shells and seaweed.

I collected the items I wanted to use together to see what worked. The ivy is silk but the rest are all berries) and nuts that I've harvested and dried. 

Some time later with the help of a glue gun the finished article!