Wednesday, April 27, 2011
These are the same rings that I posted a few days ago. I finally got around to buffing off the matte finish top layer/patina and was pleasantly surprised to discover that now it actually looks like metal. I’m really quite thrilled about it, and it was a nice discovery after a difficult couple days. Because of how much muscle has converted to junk tissue my hands/arms no longer have the strength to open “child-proof” bottles without a struggle so I had to ask the pharmacy to change the packaging they use for my prescription which was a little embarrassing (or even degrading feeling). I’ve enjoyed making things like this jewelry and it keeps my spirits up (even if it is wearing out my arms), so I know it’s going to be very emotionally difficult for me when I can’t do this any more. All I can do is hope for the process to be a slow one I guess…
Enough waawaawaaaaa whining though. Check out the rings — from left to right the materials are, I think, copper, bronze, silver/nickel, and brass. They are mixed roughly two parts plastic to one part metal powder (by volume, not weight), and cast in silicone molds. There is no clear coat or anything like that creating an artificial sheen — this is what came out of the moldl without anything added afterwards. The plastic base is “Amazing” casting resin from Alumilite and the metal powders are from Smooth-On, both of which have been great to work with and I recommend. Click to zoom in if you’d like.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
I quickly whipped out a set of mini-fridge magnets, using “FIXIT” (a two part putty for tool repair that also works great for making things) applied directly on top of a little ceramic magnet that I got a 10-pack of at Home Depot for $2 or something like that. Here they are next to a quarter and a penny for scale, and if you want to see close-ups I put some after the break. Oh, and starting top-left and going clockwise, they are: a Jason-type hockey mask wearing psycho, some sort of creature akin to a “real life” Pac-Man, a dog (duh!), and a puffy-nosed drunkard. I don’t know why, but I find myself drawn to miniatures right now and feel a real sense of accomplishment — I can understand why people get off on carving pencil leads although I do think that writing on the edge of a razor blade may be a bit far in kooky territory.
(Continued)
I’ve mentioned a few times that I’ve started working on jewelry, so let me finally get around to posting some pictures to show you how that’s going so far. I’m sure you’ve noticed before that I made some molds of doll faces that I’ve integrated into things like the bowls I just posted. I also decided to make some rings out of them, in the style of skull rings, but with the flesh and skin still in place. I have some other ones started, but so far I have completed three — a guy, a girl, and a baby. Big, medium, small. A Goldilocks set? Much of what I’ve been doing is experimenting with different plastics and finishes as well as working on making convenient and high quality, easy-to-use molds. All of these were made with three-part silicone molds. In between parts I pressed Lego blocks into the silicone pre-curing so that they fit together quite snugly.
Here are the three styles. You can click to zoom in on any of the photos, and after the break there are some more pictures and some information on the different materials that I used and some comments on them. When (if?) I finally get around to creating an online store for this stuff, I will surely include these in some form.
(Continued)
Today I’m going to try and get caught up and post a bunch of the projects that I’ve finished lately but have not yet posted. Let me begin with a couple new figurines that I made. The first I made for my brother and the other was just for fun, an experiment to see what it would be liking using Apoxie over top of a metal armature. I also made some plugs/holes in the head to try mounting some hair in but I haven’t done so yet and probably won’t because I think I prefer it as is. So… nothing terribly exciting here but I like them.
The text around the base says “WORLD’S STRONGEST MUTANT 2111″ by the way.
