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.

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!

I really must feed my subconscious more often

big shell1
Originally uploaded by steampunkglass

It’s funny how glass making can be come a kind of trance somedays, and that’s when the subconscious can sneak in and give you a nice surprise. I had a brief afternoon trip to St Ives the other week. Normally that would be great, except this was a cold and windy day, and we went there to try and clear our heads after a funeral in Truro a day before.
I must say I do like seaside towns when they are off-peak; you get to see the real place hiding under the plastic spades and holidaymakers. After a few hours cheerless wandering, I popped into a tourist shell shop, feeling the need to get something ‘positive’ however small and silly. I bought a small bag of chipped shells and one larger long coil shell, not even sure why. When asked what was in my little £2.99 brown paper bag I said ‘a bag of inspiration,’ although I felt far from inspired. On my return home the bag got left in a corner of my workshop as other routine things like washing clothes and buying cat food took precedence.
Then on Sunday I was messing around with some new techniques I’ve been trying, mostly involving making spirals trapped inside beads (I love doing spirals!) Some of them were taking ages to do, 45mins on a bead is a very long time to stare at the same thing, when in a lapse of concentration – or I think maybe my subconscious had a better idea – I pulled too far on a spiral, and then pulled a bit more, and a bit more, until I had these amazing shell-shaped beads, with little sea anemones trapped inside! Of course what I didn’t realise until after I had tidied them and tweeked them a little, that they were like that one big shell I had bought a couple of weekends before. I then looked on my desk and found I’d ‘doodled’ the same twisty texture with some other glass that I then didn’t know what to do with.
So, the moral is, feed your subconscious, even when you don’t think it’s paying attention!