Dragon Eye Sculpture and painting tutorial

I ran across Klaire De Lys and her makeup artistry some time ago on  YouTube.  She's a remarkable artist from England who does a lot of fantasy and horror transformations in makeup that are really cool.  Back in 2013, she did a dragon eye jar out of terracotta clay that was glued onto a glass jar.  I loved the scale technique and wanted to do a wearable piece.  I also wanted to play around with doing some sort of iridescent scale without the metallic paints because I don't have any on hand right now.

This is one of the resin cast and painted pieces.  The camera doesn't do it justice and I wasn't able to pick up the fine detail of the painting, which does look iridescent in the light.  I think they turned out great!  I know I'm turning the larger size into a necklace, but I'm still planning out how I want to do that.  The only things I'm sure about are there will be chains and beads, but beyond that, I'm a little stumped.  I'm thinking a short necklace, but it depends on whether or not this piece will overwhelm at that length.

This is a great October project.  The unblinking cats eye is a little creepy and perfect for this time of the year.  I want to wear this to work but I'm worried that the dogs that I work with won't be as excited about this piece as I am.

I can see it now. "Hey! It's Nice Daycare Lady!  She's up front and OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT THING STARING AT ME ON YOUR CHEST??"  

There are both painted and unpainted versions of the eye available for sale.

Sculpting the eye

Cosmos Jewelry part 2: The Spaceship of the Imagination

When I saw Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, I knew I wanted to sculpt the Spaceship of the Imagination.  If you haven't seen either of the series, the spaceship is a magical creation that can travel anywhere, from distant stars to subatomic particles.  In Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, the ship appears as a ball of light or we see the bridge.  This time, Ryan Church designed a beautiful, sleek oblong ship that ushers us along our journey with Tyson.

My original inspiration was an amazing steampunk choker that I picked up at SoonerCon from C.C. Guice of A Wench in the Gear.  I loved the cascade of chains from the bottom and the large focal point and the buckle closure in the back.  It's one of my favorite pieces to wear... I get compliments on it all the time!

This project hasn't gone as well as I hoped it would.  My original intention was to cast this piece, but my molds have all been consistently crappy.  It's been 15 years since I made a mold using sillicone, and despite all the YouTubing, I've been unable to get something that works using homemade soloutions.  I broke down and bought some mold putty, which will hopefully allow me to cast this in resin like I want to.  I may need to phone a friend.  (the link contains nudes and may be NSFW)

Since I wanted this project to be ready by the time I publish the blog, I tried to turn "Frusturating failure" into "happy accident".