Museums to Visit at Christmas Time
Dec 10
The Leavenworth Nutcracker Museum made the top 5 museums to visit at Christmas time list over at Museum Diary.
Here’s the excerpt from the Museum Diary site:
“The Leavenworth Nutcracker Museum shows over 6,000 nutcrackers dating back to Roman times. There are many types of nutcrackers made of many different materials, from stone to fragile ivory. Not only antique nutcrackers are shown, but also the popular wooden toy soldiers from Germany. Karl, [their] 6 foot museum beer drinking museum ambassador, was carved in Oberammergau by the late Karl Rappl.” The museum also has a dedicated website for children.
Link to article = http://museumdiary.com/2014/12/05/top-5-museums-to-visit-at-christmas-time/
—– Brandon
Ardoria Site Updated
Dec 04Been really busy rebuilding the Ardoria.com Website.
I tied it directly into the Etsy store to make things more efficient and easier to manage.
Click here to see how it’s coming along –> Ardoria Studio Site
—– Brandon
Happy Thanksgiving
Nov 28
Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!
We got to spend time with family. We spent Thanksgiving at my mom and dad’s house, had a great turkey dinner, watched the parade, and watched old home movies my Grandfather made of all of us and my cousins. Everyone got a kick out of seeing everyone in their younger years and got a good laugh at how chubby of a baby I was. Yep, I was a bit of a Butterball.
As I get older, I’m realizing how important times like these are in a person’s life and how much I’m going to miss them someday. Days like I had yesterday are what memories are made of.
I hope everyone had as nice of a Thanksgiving as we did.
—– Brandon
Grinning Man
Oct 26Here’s a great example of a screw type nutcracker.
This one had no handle and had been applied to a piece of furniture or something. The hole for the screw had been plugged and dowels and screw holes were in the feet and body.
So after some time spent at the carving bench and some time spent on ye ol’ mini lathe, this guy is back to his original glory as a nutcracker.
Before - Notice the hole in the middle
Before - Screw hole plugged and dowels in the feet and coat
After Repairs - Front
After Repairs - Back
I really enjoy bringing a piece back to its original form and glory.
—– Brandon
Concrete and more concrete
Oct 08
Yep, it’s been a really rainy Summer over here in good ol’ Ohio.
It’s October and I’m just now finishing up a concrete project here on the property that I planned to have had done in June or early July at the latest. The weather was more of a challenge than I anticipated this year.
This all started with a concrete pad that the previous owners had installed. The pad had cracked diagonally, and a chunk of the cement had to be removed last year to access the clean out port to our septic system (yes, they poured the pad over one of the septic system clean outs… sigh). The pad was an eye sore as well as a safety hazard with the chunk of concrete removed.
So I decided this was going to be the year to resurface the pad. Yeah, any normal person would buy a couple bags of cement resurfacer and squeegee it over the cracks and stuff to pretty it up and call it done. Nope, not me. I decided I’m going with a European worn cobblestone look with a hidden removable trap door over the septic clean out.
As I’m selling the idea to my wife, she requested I expand the project to include the grassy area between the sidewalk and the pad (from 100 sq. ft. of hardscaping to 254 sq. ft.). That turned out to be a great idea. Not only does it eliminate some precarious mowing, but it also makes for a much more natural walking path to the pad. It also gave me an excuse to use my Quickrete Country Stone Pattern pathmaker along with the new European Block Brick ones to add some extra detail to the project. Awesome!
I used about 70 eighty pound bags of Quickrete Crack Resistant concrete, 2 Quickrete European Block Brick forms, 1 Quickrete Country Stone Pattern form, 1 gallon of Quickrete High Gloss Sealer, and most importantly a concrete mixer from Harbor Freight to pull this project off.
The following pictures show the before and after of my efforts.
I still need to put polymeric sand down to lock everything in place, but for the most part all the really hard work is done and this Summer long project is finally done.
—– Brandon
A Griffin
Sep 13
Here’s a very rare Griffin nutcracker that came into the shop recently for some repairs.
Some of you may recognize this piece from the 2010 Nutcracker Club Convention that was hosted by Mike and Linda Pickwick in Connecticut. Mike and Linda have a fantastic collection. This is one of the pieces I took a ton of pictures of at his house. So I was thrilled to have it here in my studio for repairs. Yes, I took even more pictures of it while it was here. I really like this piece.
The Griffin came in missing a right foot, had a piece missing from the shield, and was missing the left wingtip. There were also some older repairs on the tail, right rear leg, and around the pin that needed to be removed and fixed correctly.
This piece came out great and is flawless now.
Here are some before and after photos (be sure to click on the photos for a larger view):
This piece was a lot of fun to work on and is really stunning in person.
Thanks again to Mike and Linda for sending this piece in and allowing me to make it perfect for them.
—– Brandon