Francis had babies!

What's more insane than making a little clay clay dragon that was fiddly as all hell? Making even smaller clay dragons of course! These were a pain but also pretty fun. These photos aren't the best but give an idea at least of what I was going for.

This is Jake, a gambling/luck dragon I guess, I played around with giving him really long ears and spots/patches over spikes on his back. His tummy and spots are the same green clay as Francis' body. I painted on his eyes with acrylic paint as while Francis' eyes are adorable as small glass beads I didn't want to wrestle seed beads onto the little one's head and have them potentially look too big. Next time I may try making clay eyes and adding a bit of paint to those after baking to add depth. Jake is just over 4cm tall and 5 1/2 cm from nose to tail.

 

 Justin takes after dad and is an alchemy dragon, though is far more tricky to photograph well! He's black and glittery so pretty to look at but getting the camera to pick up details was a pain. I was going to add spikes to his back but I got to this point and liked how sleek he is. Whatever he's brewing in that tiny vial looks pretty evil too, which wasn't intentional but makes me smile now. He sort of reminds me of a Night fury. Justin is a little over 3cm tall and just shy of 4cm long.

And the baby of the family, Belle. I made her first out of the three and had intended to make them all the same size but as the evening wore on they got bigger, likely due to it getting darker outside and doing 'fiddly' getting harder. Unlike her brothers she has little horns and as making spikes for her back would have driven me nuts I went with a ridge down her back. She's holding a tiny silver bell that actually jingles a little which makes me smile more than it should. She also took the longest to sculpt as she was so tricky to get things in the right places on. Overall she's about 3cm both tall and long.

And, of course, obligatory family photo!

More details on the prototype runes

It's a bit brighter today so some slightly clearer shots ahead!

First was playing with a couple of ideas. While I dislike the overall effect on this runestone the two ideas have potential;

1) Glitter in the carved runestone. This one has 2 shades of green glitter as I was inspired by the Empire wiki's entry on Tempest Jade. The glitter is glued with PVA and then sealed in with clear varnish. Other colours of glitter could be used to represent fragments of something else, perhaps gemstones or I did briefly consider a mix of paint and gold glitter as a showing of wealth kind of thing.

2) Rougher texture. This really didn't work so well with the black clay but I wanted to try to make a stone that hadn't been smoothed out entirely, keeping its natural roughness. Dents, scratches and texture to the clay itself was done by adding green tea to the polymer clay while working it.

Embedding one kind of clay in another was another experiment I did and while this stone is looking a little messy and the colours don't quite work together the idea has potential. I'd potentailly be tempted to use this method to put glow in the dark clay into the stones. I also experimented with a more round shape to the stone on this one.

Not much to say on this one besides I tried a more rounded shape again. I played with mixing some grey & glitter into my black clay to give the stone more depth.I tried embedding a different colour clay into this one as well but there wasn't enough contrast so I painted over it, though the paint isn't popping as much as I'd like either (I need more colours of paint)

I wanted to make at least one utterly basic stone. I've been going a little crazy with various designs and added materials I though it'd be nice to try to look at simple ideas too. This is two similar colours blended together and the rune carved straight into it.

Another play with my 'bloodsoaked' idea. Though this time from certain angles it looks more like jam! (or maybe that's just me and my oddities) I also played with making a different kind of stone, I kind of like the colours on this one even if the rune itself could be a little better, I was playing with effects over getting the rune carved in exactly right.

 Sculpting up rather than carving down! This was way more time consuming and carving is time consuming enough! That said I like that it's got a different look and feel to it.

More sculpting the rune. My hubby thinks the gold doesn't stand out enough from the stone but I kind of like it, if I was making a set of these I'd probably get a slightly shinier gold paint rather than this with is gold ink from an ink pad which sulked when I tried to varnish it. I'm kinda fond of the stone itself too if only because this was the first stone I made out of the batch of prototypes and I used some methods I wasn't sure would work and when they did it meant I could try applying them to other stones. Also the colours are warm and slightly autumny..

Oh and fun random factoid, some of the depth/texture in colour comes from adding cinnamon to the clay. I'd kind of hoped it's leave a faint scent but it didn't at all.. though it has made me ponder on potentially scenting some future clay creations, because I could mostly.

This one was a nightmare to photograph as it needs to be picked up and played with to show it's full potential. This is clay wrapped over a glass pebble, so when the light hits it right you get a flash of (in this particular case) red. I'm not sure on the clay colour, I both like and dislike it, I think maybe it's because it looks a bit more like a biscuit or similar baked yummy treat than something clay/stone/rock/similar. I did make another in this style that failed quite badly as the glass didn't show through well.

I'd had a feeling that would happen which is why on this one I carved a small window of sorts onto the back of the stone. This really adds something by letting the light through. Even my hubby who doesn't like the colour of the clay on this one picked it up with an 'Eh..' attitude, until the light caught it, the ensuing surprised sound and him looking more closely at it makes me think I'm on to at least a partial win on this one!

Speaking of glass pebbles I also made this! Originally the rune itself was modeled out of clay but it was just too fragile and in the post-bake cleanup of its shape it decided to pop off of the pebble. After gluing myself to myself in an attempt to fix it I realised it was all too delicate and fiddly to be used for a runestone which should be handled a fair bit. Instead I have the glass wrapped in clay around the edge which gives it a sturdier feel than just a simple glass pebble and the rune I painted on in acrylic before applying a coat of varnish to get it to stay. Sorry the photo isn't great, but taking pics of glass is a nightmare!

This was an experiment in a couple of things. I thought I'd try a different shape again for variety, going with a slightly more rectangular vibe. I also wanted to play with colour in the carving, more specifically subtle dying if the clay is a pale colour. The blue specks in the clay are a blue glitter so overall this rune feels very wintery.

Fauxpal! Or at least that was what I was roughly aiming for. I wanted to try to make something opal-ish for an interesting depth of colour. The process used to make this stone meant that if I carved into it it would no longer look like an opal (though in hindsight may have looked cool in other ways). I didn't want to scuplt the rune onto it either as I wanted to aim for something sleek, so in the end I just went with painting the rune on in acrylic and sealing it with varnish.

Last one! This one I've been calling 'Storm Jade', again because of Tempest Jade, lots of swirly green and a tiny bit of glitter. Nothing overly fancy really I just came to an end effect I like.

How my day disappeared..

I thought I'd get around to trying out different materials and methods to make runestones from and before I knew it hours had passed and I had 13 samples of various quality. I really like a couple of them but as it's starting to get dark all I can offer for now are icky flash-fueled photos. These don't really give an idea of depth of colour but at least show the variety I'm playing with.

 

 

 

 

Clip-on Fetish - Rainy Day Photos

Another fetish I made, this time for my hubby, I bought loads of beads and other such cool things so I'd have enough to make his necklace with so in the end I was left with spares. So I made this:

 Glass and wooden beads, leather cord, feather and obsidian arrowhead all attached to a metal lobster clasp so it can be attached to anything. His current plan is to attach it to this pouch though:

 Which I think is a great match! I'm actually pretty happy with it. He suggested braiding the cord, if that had been the plan from the start there'd be a knot at the bottom of the braid to secure it rather than it being held by superglue, but shh! 

Fetish for Fetishes - Rainy Day Photos

Excuse the poor lighting (again), I really need better weather! These are the start on my fetishes, for simplicity they are lengths of leather cord with interesting things tied to them, they're designed so they can be tied to kit, into hair, hung from things, used as bookmarks or anything really.. just simple things to make stuff look more IC. A broader selection and better photos to come (hopefully).

Black wooden beads, a wooden ring and a spare polymer clay fang:

 Makes a good bookmark for smaller books/journals:

 

 I really like purple and brown together. Brown feather, purple glass and wooden beads, brown polymer clay beads:

 

 Vaguely watery. Blue/green feather, various shades of blue beads in glass and wood:

 

Man Jewellery - Rainy Day Photos

I've marked this post as a work in progress, not because the pieces aren't finished but because the photos make me a sad bunny. It's been very rainy and miserable and getting any degree of good natural light into the flat for photos has been nigh on impossible. So here are some okay photos for now, I can hopefully get some better shots before one of these goes off to it's intended recipient. If not it'll have to wait for pictures out in the field when Empire starts!

I really need to think of a better term than 'Man Jewellery' too, but it'll do for now..

 

 

 

Poor lighting and/or flash doesn't do the materials used many favours here. But this is one black & green necklace made using wood and glass beads and another necklace made using a mixture of wood and glass beads and of course the polymer clay fangs I made.

Bloodsoaked Runes

After such good feedback on my prototype I made a full set of the 'bloodsoaked' runes. I still have no idea what to do with them but they sort of demanded to be made!

I went vaguely Navarri with things I threw in the background to add character to the photos, in hindsight I should have dug a few more things out but this was arty enough and isn't the boring white background! Plus I did make use of those teeth/fangs I'm working on for background dressing!

Oh and for added creepiness; red food colouring can be put into the carvings, it'll dry out so won't rub too badly but if the stones are put in water they'll then seep 'blood'.