Slate Display

**The Dragon** · 21-08-2009, 08:12 PM

I decided to pay a visit to B&Q this lunchtime to cheer me up ( It has been a truly awful day today - nothing works or will go right)

While I was aimlessley looking around the garden section I came across a real find. They are now stocking natural slate stepping stones - a by product from quarry acivities. They are a good 18" long x 8/10" wide and 1" deep in places. The texture is wonderful and the colours are very subtle, all for £5.98.

I'm going to clean and seal mine and use it for staging some of my pieces - I think they are going to look great - if you get chance go and check them out, you never know what they might inspire you to.

**agent_44** · 21-08-2009, 08:19 PM

Ooh, I am always on the lookout for decent natural slate, I shall have to investigate, thank you! I even tried to convince my OH to dig up his patio, as it's very old and wonky, but mostly because it has lovely huge slate slabs in it!

**bustagasket** · 21-08-2009, 08:35 PM

how very true, i had some driftwood in an old fishtank and so i found that the other day so i have put it aside, and i guess it was like my gravel out the front and the statue, you start looking at things in a different light lol

**The Bijou Dragon** · 21-08-2009, 09:05 PM

Ooh... I have a huge slab of slate we rescued (with the owners permission) a while ago for our fish tank but it never got used!!

We couldn't believe our eyes at the time it was a good foot and a half square but with cracked down one side... we knocked on the door and asked if we could take it and they were more than happy, it was blooming heavy though!

I don't think my fish (well mine until we sell the tank in three days

) would be happy if I took the wood out of their tank for photo purposes, but it's a good idea... hmmm

I have joined the 'Sainsbury's hand' guild though...

Apologies for hijacking!!

**Solunar Silver Studio** · 22-08-2009, 05:21 AM

My mum let me have 3 slabs of slate of a similar size out of her garden a couple of years ago. I use them to minimise heat transfer in places in my wooden shed. There is one under my firebricks that raise up my fusing area to a comfortable height for working and one underneath and behind my kilns. They are a bit mucky - although I did wash them over and over I never seemed to be able to get all the mud off!!..but they provide safe areas where I can put really hot stuff down in an emergency and not risk setting fire to the shed!! More practical, then, in my case...I don't think I will use them for my displays!!!

.

**MuranoSilver** · 22-08-2009, 07:50 AM

When do we get to see your slate pictures then???

(p.s. great tip!)
Nic xx

**mizgeorge** · 22-08-2009, 09:57 AM

I use a repurposed slate roof tile (from our outside loo) as background for a lot of my photos, I particularly like it for plain silver pieces.

**The Dragon** · 23-08-2009, 10:45 AM

As soon as I finish building my light box, I have a contempory piece I really want to publish. The trouble is I loose 11 hours a day to work 5 days a week, so making anything involving power tools is slow - my OH objects to being woken up at 2 in the morning. lol

Hopefully we can get a big chunk of it done today.

**CyberPaddy66** · 23-08-2009, 05:39 PM

Get your OH some ear plugs, they'll never hear a thing :lol:

**Binraker** · 01-09-2009, 06:41 PM

Somewhere I have 5 slate tiles that I used to use to photograph bits of metal in front of. They are about a foot square and came from the floor tile section of B&Q and were dirt cheap. The nice thing was that the edges were clean cut so you could build the corner of a box and photograph into that. I got some very nice pictures with them, if only I could remember what I did with them....