Jacaranda Christmas Tree

Here's a jacaranda tree in the main patio of Spanish Village doing its Christmas duty, sporting some ornaments. You can see the seed pods on it as well. They will stay for quite awhile, maybe only being blown off by the wind or maybe the season will cause them to drop. The leaves will fall off too at some point, but they still look green for the most part.

I spent the morning in my studio preparing a gift for an aquaintance and some family members. Then I spent the middle of the day at Christmas dinner with my family. It was a beautiful warm day, so warm in fact that I wound up wearing something different than I intended. My green Christmas jacket turned out to be too warm.

Late this afternoon I came back to my studio and worked until quite late. My biggest "discovery" right now is that I can cut most of the copper that I have with my scissors. My special friend told me I could use a paper cutter, and I'm sure I can. That would work for straight edges, like bracelets. But for any irregular shapes, the scissors will work.

That opens up a whole new avenue of possibility. I can cut the copper and use it for etching or etch it first and then cut it. Of course, I could use a jewelers saw, but those are kind of tricky and take time, at least for me, because I'm not that skilled using one. I've been wanting to etch a fish for my father, so this evening, I took my scissors and cut a fish out of a sheet of copper. I'll prepare him and then etch him. It will be much nicer than a rectangular plate with fish etched on it. It occured to me that I could even print it first on paper before I give it to him. And then I got to thinking about odd shaped plates for printing. That's something else I've wanted to try: printing a plate that's not just a rectangle or a square. I'm on my way.

All this thought of etching made me realize that I have plates that I need to etch. However, when I went through my stack of plates which are all together now in one spot, I realized that I only had one plate ready to etch. Well, really, that's all I can etch at one time. But it also helps me to see that I need to work on the eight other plates as well, finish them so I can move on.

So I etched the plate that was ready. It turned out fine, even though it was this evening and getting cold. I left it in for two hours. It could have stayed in longer, but it was getting late, so I took it out and cleaned it up. I can cut it with the paper cutter tomorrow.