Alabaster

Here is a small piece of alabaster fashioned into an out of focus necklace ...

It could have been thinner but I thought I'd stop before I broke it. Anyway Mal likes it.

Stone Carving

I learnt some stone carving techniques over the summer, working mainly with soapstone. I used a gouge and a hammer and chisel to hack bits off, carve and make holes in a lump of green mottled soapstone. The finish is quite rough until smoothed down with files or rasps and buffed up with sandpaper, rag and polish.

One issue is that only when you have buffed the sculpture that you can really see all the imperfections. So it can be quite an iterative process. The piece pictured is nowhere near as smooth as it could be.

It is easier to smoothe out a smaller more regular piece like this aum.