procedure —
1 way of proceeding, performing a task
1 way of proceeding, performing a task
2 series of actions, conducted in a certain order or manner
Dragonfly Gourd
This is a hardshell gourd with wood burned design, color pencil, copper wire and my 'plique a jour' dragonfly.
The gourd was first subjected to my wood burning some accents into its already beautifully mottled surface. After that, using just three Derwent color pencils, the primaries of red, blue and yellow, I layered all of the color onto the gourd, then applied a UV protective coating. Paying attention to the resident natural mottling, I twisted and turned, hammered and spiraled the copper wire onto the stem, forming it to match the recently applied embellishments. The last addition was the plique a jour dragonfly.
Plique a jour is made by hand sawing a design, in this case the dragonfly, from a 18 or 20 gauge commercially available copper sheet with a jeweler's type coping saw. For the enclosed cell, you have to drill a hole first, then unlock the blade of the saw and thread it through the hole, cut the shape, unlock the blade again to get it out. There are about 42 different little cells in this little dragon. Did this while the dragonfly was still 'in' the copper sheet. The hardest part was sawing the whole dragonfly free of that sheet, especially his little feelers!
The edges are then filed smooth, sanded and cleaned really really clean. The piece is placed on a sheet of mica and open cells are filled with different colors of ground glass. Same as the material used for enameling. The little copper piece is then fired which melts the glass ... resulting in a tiny, tiny stained glass window.
The dragonfly on this gourd is less than 1-1/2" across!