London MCM Expo May 2013

I've said it before, and I don't mind saying it again; Thank you! Thank you to everyone who came and saw us at the Expo at the Excel centre this weekend, who took time to chat to us, who bought something from us, and of course those who just looked amazing! Thank you!



Outside the Excel Centre on Saturday night 

It has to be the most amazing Expo for us yet! With wider aisles, better spacing, and more exits/entrances it was so much easier to get around this time. Of course for us Expo started months ago, with me making extras that I've been putting aside ready, mostly larger sparklier marbles! That didn't stop me from last minute panics and glass melting, and the almost expected propane tank running out on Sunday morning! The local garage had run out of canisters, but luckily a local garden centre had one of my 'emergency back-up size' in stock, so a quick dive there and I was back in business! I managed a couple more kiln fulls by Wednesday evening, including a couple of new Aliens designs too, although neither ended up being mounted as I wasn't happy with them. I did have a very few Aliens, but not as many as I would have liked to have taken.

Wednesday night and Thursday morning was all last minute packing, and 'what have I forgotton' panics, before the evening drive to London. We decided to stay over the night before this time, as it meant we didn't have the early morning start and then drive through rush hour, and we could take more time over setting up. However we were really surprised to see how many Expo-goers had already turned up too, after checking in to the hotel as soon as we walked outside saw a group of fully dressed Jedi going into the corner shop opposite! I got a very quick snap, which doesn't show they were also carrying their light sabres too! So, now you know, Nisa shops are favoured by Jedi's!




Jedi's heading to Nisa

Friday! First a tense ten minutes whilst I tried to book for the October Expo, then a hour to navigate the complex Excel loading bay system, get our passes, unload, park, then finally begin to set up! We were luckly to be on a odd end where the stall next to us had to suround their stall for security (they sold knives and swords) so it gave us a handy wall to display the few aliens I'd bought. It was great to feel rested and able to take our time to set up, but the time still flew and before I knew it they were announcing the doors opened in thirty minutes!

And then the doors were open, and after that everything became a wonderful neon blur! Lots of people to talk to, many of them who'd seen us there last May and had come back again, including one Lady who'd deliberately come along for an Alien for her birthday pressent! On Saturday it was so busy they even opened the doors ten minutes early, but the new systems kept it feeling open and not crushed. I barely got chance to take any pictures, but I did get a quick shot of the Excel on Saturday night, which had turned into a lovely sunny day. Before we knew it, it was Sunday, the Expo was over and it was time to pack away and get home for a soak in the bath, a pizza, rest, and catch up on all the boring admin I've been ignoring for the past month as I've been manically melting glass! That hasn't stopped me from starting to plan for October's Expo though......



Our stall set up ready on Friday

Exhibition!!!

The exciting news is that I have some of my Alien Specimens in an exhibition, starting on Friday! The collection is entitled 'Glass' and features work from 30 different glass artists at the Cuploa Gallery in Sheffield from 3rd May to 16th June.

cupolagallery.com

This is quite a major show, it's been quite a surprise to see myself (and a picture of one of the Aliens) featured in press releases and emails from other mailing lists I'm on of upcoming exhibitions. I really wanted to go up for the opening night, but I just don't think I can make it as I only found out I was including a short time ago (thanks to some lost emails) and it seems all the trains and hotels rooms in Sheffield seem booked that weekend. This was by selection only, so I was delighted to hear I'd been chosen!

 One lobster didn't make it, thanks to the post office, and arrived upside down in a box clearly marked 'this way up,' one of the gallery directors told me he saw the driver offloading it, and was surprised that only one was broken. Not as bad as one artist though, for whom every item he sent arrived smashed. However the lobster I know can be rebuilt, and will give me the excuse to make some tweaks to it that I wanted to make.

This does mean I won't have very many aliens to take to the MCM Expo in London, but space is limited there this year, and hopefully the ones in Sheffield will now find new homes, then I can use the proceeds of their 're-homing' to fund making some more new and exciting ones!

Alien Sea Huntress

Or it might end up just being called Sea Huntress, or The Huntress. In my mind it's just 'why have I got this crazy necklace idea in my head? I've got enough half finished projects already without starting another one!'

This nearly did stall, and I know that I could still be tweaking it, but I'm trying to get back to one of the earliest lessons' I learnt with glass - stop, move on; that's as good as you can do for now, learn by it and take those lessons to the next thing you make. Easier said than done, I even posted some earlier pictures on Frit Happens to get some feedback to see what needed tweaking. I almost ended up with too many ideas of changes, so after a dozen more times threading and unthreading it, moving elements around, adding and taking them away, it ended up going very nearly back to how it started. I did find adding a few small Tibetan spacer beads helped some of the claws sit more neatly, which ended up being the main tweak. I wasn't going to put the spike in the centre, and just have the two claws facing each other, but when I did it was just crying out for something major between them. I even had to make beads for it - yes beads! I hardly ever make beads, and I hated the first ones, but then remembered some 'bumpy' style ones I'd seen somewhere, so made some like that which I really liked, and as a bonus kept more of the metallic lusters.

It's been an interesting project, and bizarrely came from working on the Alien monsters, where I'd developed some interesting ways of adding colour and texture. With this one the colour has a really, really, high silver and metal content, so in real life has some wonderful metallic lusters. Oddly though parts of it show up as yellow when light shines through them, but green-blue when the light hits it straight on!

I am still deciding if I should list this on Etsy, or take it along to the May Expo. When I make things like this, I tend to think 'would this look like something someone of 'Farscape' would have worn?' If the answer is yes, or at least possiably, then I think it's right.

Talking of which, I have some news about the Aliens, but it's not confirmed yet, so you are going to have to wait until the next post, but I will post on my Facebook page as soon as I know it's going to happen.

In the meantime, here's lots of pictures of the necklace.

Birmingham, here we come! (What have I forgotten to pack?)

Well, it's been months in the planning, and then lots of last minute running around and I am still wondering what I've forgotten! It's the Birmingham MCM Comic-con this weekend, and not only the first big event of the year for me, but also the first time I've ever done this show so am not sure what to expect! Hopefully it'll all be good things, and if it's anything like the London show it'll be full of amazing outfits and really lovely people to chat too! I've got some really nice new large marbles, plus new Aliens Specimen pictures too! OH (Other Half) is on hand again to help out on the stall, and in return I've promised her a trip(s) to some of Birmingham's legendary Balti houses! Yum! As you can see from this quick snap everything is packed (I hope), I guess I've either forgotten something as it feels like this time we've got less to take, I think I've got better at packing!

 I can't wait, although I am still wondering what I've forgotten.

Ah, just remembered..... clothes, toothbrush..... I haven't packed my suitcase yet!

T-Minus 8 days... and counting...

In a few days I'll temporarily close my Etsy shop (so if you have you're eye on anything please grab it before next Monday!) as we're off to Birmingham for the MCM Comic-con & Memorabilia Expo at the NEC on 16-17th March. This is the first time I've been at this event, so not sure what to expect - appart from the chance to get a really good Balti curry of course!

New test alien lifeform

What is familiar is the impending chaos and worry I haven't got/done/made something, even this quick shot shows how I'm already getting burried under boxes and bits. As it was, I was going to write this blog a few days ago, and not had a chance to until this morning.

Somewhere, I put it down here somewhere....

 Quite a few things have had to go on hold, including inventing new Aliens, however I couldn't resist the chance to show you this little fellow. He needs a little more work, as this was a test piece, then a few more to keep him company and then a nice rock to mount the colony on. I'd imagine he's a sea urchin, the tendrils ontop will have stinging points to catch any unwary alien fish, and grip onto rocks on the shoreline. I have been rather inspired after seeing a post about the Cambrian explosion of life, http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/02/18/weird-youth-animal-kingdom/ . This was a weird period when nature threw some very odd creatures together, it seems however strange some of my alien fauna and flora are, nature has got there before me with some really strange strangeness!

When I grow up, I want to be a Mad Scientist

Blue Lobster-Octopus thing.....

As I try to get ready for the next big sci-fi Expo, with one eye on getting ready for xmas too, panic is setting in that I'm not making enough. So as I work later, the music is getting louder and faster! Amongst this I'm playing alot of 'Rob Zombie' and many of the songs have lots of sound dubs from old horror films, all of which takes me back to when I was young, and was allowed to stay up on Friday or Saturday nights to watch horror films - of which I thought at the time the Hammer horrors were the best!

This also reminded me of the great school playground debate of  'what do you want to be when you grow up?' I thought I wanted to be a scientist, but part of me knew that still wasn't quite right.

Different angle of 'Blue Thing'

Modern scientists wear white coats, work in big bright clean laboratories, and work in big teams on complex little bits of science written up in learned publications no-one can understand. I couldn't quite put my finger on it at the time, but I knew that wasn't the type of scientist that I wanted to be. I wanted to be more like my hero's at the time; Peter Cushing or one of the 50's black and white scientists dashing around in the dead of night. I wanted to be the sort of scientist that works in a tweed waistcoat and cravat, whose laboratory is a dark dusty basement of a castle, whose colleague is called 'Igor' and helps dig up supplies from the graveyard next door, and communicates discoveries by wildly shouting 'It's alive! It's aliiiiivvvee!!!!' Yes, I wanted to be a mad scientist.

Body parts or the blue lobster before being grafted onto the body



seroastrumare duotripodes, which means 'two legged star-seaweed' all mounted up ready to go to the Expo

Of course most people don't then grow up to be firemen, policemen etc, and certainly not to be a mad Victorian scientist, and so I went and did more (mostly) sensible things. I guess this is what drew me originally to the SteamPunk genre, but it's only now that I am starting to really fulfil my childhood ambitions of creating insane creatures.



A new Red Star Spiral
 

 I do indeed have frock coat, cravat, waistcoat etc, but tend not to wear them whilst working as they are rather hot to work in! However if I was in a draughty farmhouse, castle, lighthouse, windmill etc, then it might well be worth me taking that up as work attire. Of course, what I really lack right now, is an abandoned castle/lighthouse/farmhouse/windmill to continue my experiments creating life from glass, re-creating creatures that may have swum alien seas or ancient Martian canals.

Queue mad laughter.... a sneak preview of some new limbs I have made for an even larger, even madder creation...
 

So, if you have a property that matches this description, ideally in Suffolk or North Essex, and it's at a very, very, very low rent, then I'd be delighted to hear from you! Of course if it's not too close to any villages with pitchfork totting locals who could rally into a lynch mob that would be even better.....

Isolated lighthouse at Orford Ness, an ideal location?

Dark Mills 2010

What an amazing weekend! Where do I start? We travelled up to London on Friday so we would be ready for an early start Saturday morning, having picked a hotel literally a stones throw from Merton Abbey Mills. We even bumped into the events creator on the tube on the way there! After an evening catching up with old friends I didn't sleep much as had too many 'did I pack that?' going around my head!

A big breakfast then I dragged a body bag sized case to the venue and started setting up at 8 am. Although the event didn't start till later, I got plenty of interest from locals out walking dogs and grabbing coffees. I had a few manic flurries, but the day was fairly quiet - well almost! I didn't realise quite how close to the stage I was, and from midday I started having to do a lot of shouting! After about 6pm I could feel a sore throat coming on, not to mention the sore feet! It was a really hot day but being close to the hotel I did manage to dive back to change while Ellie, my OH, took charge of the stall (including getting the first sale of the day!)

I got to talk to lots of people, so many were really complimentary about my glass, it was so nice for people to be able to see the colours and depths to them. Some people said I'd given them too much choice! Although I'd planned to stay open till 10, by 8 we were dead on our feet so threw everything in the case shut for the night. We'd originally planned to go to the 10pm bar/club, but after a quick bite to eat we were ready for bed! So much for my rock-'n-roll lifestyle!

Sunday was a much more relaxed day, but turned out to be more amazing still! We were able to set up later, so got a bit of a lie in, before forgoing the rather disappointing hotel grub for breakfast in the Waterwheel cafe, a smart move as it was soooo tasty! We were due to have a stall next to us on Saturday selling wigs, but sadly her car broke down. When Ghoulia Peculiars http://www.myspace.com/ghouliaspeculiars managed to make it on Sunday everyone was suitable overwhelmed by the amazing handmade creations she bought with her. Wigs don't even come close to describing them, even a full head masks to transform the wearer into a wolf! Her Ophelia wig was so long she said it still trailed the floor when a 6ft model was wearing it (with heals!) There was quite a bit of trying on, even the compare Dave Disaster ran away wearing a rather fetching floral one onto the stage! One of the things that made the event so enjoyable was that all the organisers and co-ordinators were so friendly and helpful, and very, very well organised!

I managed to get more breaks during the day, and after 8pm we slowly started packing away just as a troupe of fire performers started to heat things up! Ellie got some fantastic shots of them (I'll upload more on my facebook page from the weekend.) About then an Alien wandered into the venue as they started an open air screening of the film. Someone must have called for help, as an exact copy of the 'Ghostbusters' car turned up to deal with the Alien menace! It was a slightly surreal but very fun end to an weekend full of amazing sights and sounds - I just had to get a shot of me by the car!

I've not counted the pennies exactly, after the extra expense of the hotel room and travel I may not have done more than break even, but it was such a great weekend it was so worth doing. It was great to meet so many people, thank you to everyone who came up to see my glass and chat, I certainly hope I'll be able to do it again next year!

The stall set out ready! I need more coffee!

Pondering customer - too much choice!

Wow! Wigs and masks from Ghoulia's Peculiars

Julia from Ghoulua's Peculiars fits an amazing blue wig

It's not a full moon is it?

Stall organiser Steph tries out the Medusa wig!

And Compare Dave Disaster tries something in pink!


The gathering crowds and the very smartly dressed singer from Ghostfire

Look - You forgot to polish those boots!

Fire!!!!

Alien Vs Ingela from http://www.veilofvisions.com/

Ooops! Alien decides this is a good time to leave!

Can I get one of these?