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".

Acrylic fangs

I hate Halloween store fangs. My inner Goth girl goes nuts for them and I try not to fondle them in the store too much. My outer perfectionist can't stand that they never fit right. Most are way too long for my small mouth. If I get them positioned where the top of the tooth meets the gum line, I can't close my mouth. If I can close my mouth, the fangs go way too far over my gumline and look clearly fake. The color doesn't match my teeth either and I always end up with high hopes and sad, sad realities.

I've always had dreams of having a set of custom fangs. As much as I'd like to, I can't afford to have them made for me, but I do know my way around a sculpting project. After some clever YouTube- and Google-fu, I found some instructions that seemed simple enough... make mold of teeth, sculpt teeth on positive mold and go! I've got experience sculpting, so this should be easy-peasy, right?

Nope.

The steps themselves are simple enough. It's the making realistic-looking teeth that are a good size for me that took some trial and error. I also had trouble with my materials interacting in undesirable ways. Turns out plastic loves to stick to plastic. (I knew this.) This project, which I thought I could bang out in an afternoon, ended up taking me 2 days. I ended up with 2 pairs of fangs that I was pretty happy with in the end and about 3 additional pairs that I broke. Easy. 

Yeeeah.

I spent around $30.00 (US) for the entire project, but already some of the materials lying around. Mine fit decently well without some sort of adhesive, but they're a little loose. This could be because of the petroleum jelly I was using to keep the acrylic from destroying my mold again. I've got enough of the stuff to make several molds and teeth, so my cost-per-product is much cheaper.

Skill level: Intermediate- advanced. Experience with sculpting will be very useful.  

If you're not experienced, don't worry. I'm happy to answer any questions you have.