Today I was all day busy with making some new driftwood clouds as only one is left in the shop.
And thought it would be fun to show the steps it goes through to become a piece of home decor :) First of all we of course need to find cloud shaped driftwood. Luckily clouds do not have a specific shape but still most driftwood pieces do not resemble a cloud, I always get a smile on my face when I find a 'cloud' on the beach! Most clouds we find on a beach that is hard to reach and a 1 hour drive so we do not go too often, mostly in winter time when storms bring treasures and the beaches are empty.
Although they are usually dry on the beach, I never use the wood right away, best to allow them to dry for a few weeks just to be sure that they are not damp inside.
The next step is then to attach a hook system on the backside so that it can be hung on the wall and little hooks below to attach the raindrops.
They then get a coat of white spray paint, I do not over do this or they would become white blobs, instead I give them such a layer that you see the beautiful cracks and texture of the driftwood very well, creating more dimension to the clouds.
While the clouds are drying it is time for the rain drops, which are vintage chandelier crystals. I give them a solder edge with the tiffany technique, the small crystals are hard to foil as they are so small, this prepping takes me several hours as I always do more clouds at once.
And then they need to be fluxed and soldered, again the small ones are tricky and I usually end up with several first degree burns on my hands and sometimes on my legs as the melted solder drops sometimes, ouch. Luckily we have air conditioning in our atelier as it is still about 45 degrees Celsius here (113 F degrees) and soldering is a hot job, I most likely would melt too :)
After soldering the flux gets all icky and black and needs to be cleaned.
Cleaning it thoroughly is very important, any flux residue will cause for oxidation of the solder which becomes pretty ugly. I used to do the cleaning with a nail brush and soapy water but discovered that our tumblr does it better without me breaking my back so I keep it in there for several hours and it comes our sparkling clean.
Now that the raindrops are ready it is time to arrange them to my liking.
I then measure the distances between the cloud and the drops and cut chain pieces accordingly.
Once all chains are ready it is time to attach them with special clasps, the drop to the chain and the chains to the clouds.
And tadaaa!
The clouds are finally ready, just in time to take some pictures before the sun went down :)
They will slowly appear in our decor shop, StarHomeStudio.
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