Entry Details

I call this vase "Almost Lost". It is a combination of turning, carving, pyrography, dying, and of course gold leafing. The vase is entirely hollow and is light as a feather having a wall thickness of 1/4" or less. First I turned the vase to its basic shape, set my lines for the design band and dyed the piece green. Then I carved the recess for the brickwork using a dremel and a keen eye. After this I burned in the lines to form the appearance of bricks, making them large in comparison to give an ancient greco-roman feel. After this I used a dry brush technique with acrylic paints to get the wood to look like stone. I then dyed the black design stripe and the collar, burned and gold leafed the design, sanded to 600, and finished with three coats of waterlox. This was my first experience carving a piece in such a fashion and has opened the door for me creatively as the possibilities with this technique seem, at least to me, endless.

Another background.

In order to keep the paint where I wanted it I taped off the outer edge that way I wouldn't have to worry about stray paint. I used three different colors of acrylic paint. First was a dark grey, then a carmel brown, and last an off-white cream color. These are blotched on using a large round artist's brush. This gives the look of the different tones you might find in actual stone brickwork.

Close up view of brickwork.