My chosen stone is chalk. Wikipedia Chalk and you will find a picture of "The Needles". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalk). Walk west from where I work for 3 miles along the coast and you will see these rocks for real. The stone is everywhere here.

The "Everyday Life" walk took me to an old quarry where they used to dig the stuff up for using to produce lime to give the old white cottages their limewash (and many other applications...). SPPBB and I retrieved a few pieces and carried on with the walk.

My original idea was to make some sidewalk chalk, and re-draw the fantastic bugs that where done as an art project on a sidewalk here. After an evening trying to cook the ground chalk stone and pouring it into molds, hoping it would start to warm and do what plaster of paris does and solidify, I discover that I have it wrong. For plaster of paris I need Calsiumsulphate and what I had in the pot was Calsiumcarbonate.

Back to the drawing board. I still wanted to do a similiar tool so I decided to make a crayon. I used 2/3 bees wax and 1/3 parafin wax. I heated the wax on the hob and mixed the ground chalk in as a pigment.

I needed a mold for the crayon, so I butchered a piece of plastic coated cardboard that was left over from my christmas card holders. My first two tries on filling the narrow mold didn't really succeed. as it took too long and the wax started to solidify before I managed to push enough of it in with a stick. I then took a small plastic bag and cut a corner out to make a cone to be able to sqweeze the wax gunk in. It had a similiar texture to a whipped sugar and butter mix. That worked perfectly.

The two new crayons looked naked. I kicked my boyfriend of the computer and printed them little labels with a sweet little pun on them. The labels said "IOW0" and "COLOR WIGHT".

Then I spent a midnight + drawing pictures with my new crayons. They where still a bit soft and easily breakable. So if I ever make more, I shall use only parafin wax and I will need to grind the pigment with more care. But they work and will be perfect for marking out where to cut metal at my workshop, even if you cannot do fine art with them. Maybe I can use them on some other task later on.

WIGHT CRAYON usage:
- Midnight art
- To draw a caution sign on a broken stile, where the footboard was loose.
- Got a professional artist to draw a jelly fish with it. I have a feeling he will still stick to Windsor & Newton.