Too busy to blog??

Well, two months between blog posts appears to be my standard now! What happens to all the time I think I have? While I may not have written a blog post for a while, I've still been getting some turning done, and been trying out some new techniques...with varying degrees of success. Since the start of the year, I've made eight new YouTube videos, and I'm working on another one as I type this - more of that later.

The big news is that I passed 1000 subscribers to my YouTube channel, which feels great. There's a giveaway connected to this that ends on Sunday 25th February. If you want a chance to win, the link is here: 1K Giveaway! 

At the moment, the winner will receive this when I've finished it... If you've been following my videos, you'll know this texturing and colouring came about after a disastrous attempt to paint a finish with brushes - clearly showing my artistic talents need a lot of nurturing.

It was power tools I turned to when my paint brush skills proved wanting, and it's power tools I've been relying on this weekend for my latest platter. I've been interested in doing some piercing on hollow forms for a while but my Simon Hope hollowing tool is still in its packet in a drawer waiting to be used. So I decided to pierce a platter rim instead. Piercing itself didn't take too long, but the sanding afterwards took ages. I hand-sanded so much that my phone doesn't recognise my thumb print anymore!

There's still work to do as so far it's only been sprayed black. I'm going to add some iridescent paint to bring some life and sparkle to it (I hope!).

Finally, I'm turning my mind to the demos I'll be doing this year. The first one is in April in Yorkshire - only two month's away, and judging by the speed two months pass, that will come round very quickly. If you have any ideas for how to make watching paint dry, let me know!

Happy turning...even if your workshop ends up as messy as mine...