KAPOW!

OK, OK, maybe I was wrong. Maybe you did guess my deepdark secret. Turns out Perfect Pearls is mica powder. And that's what I used. Yeah, available at any Michael's and touted by all fine stamping artisans and card makers.

BUT! I wanted to share more of it because I'm so excited about how sheeeeemery glowy glow cosmic unicorn glitters everything is turning out. Except without the unicorns. In fact, my whole yardstick for knowing what to make is asking myself "Is this too unicorny?'
 So like here for ie, this badass lionface. he was a gift from SacredCake eons ago. He's a bigun and I just couldn't figure out what to do with him. He was originally in a big ol' frame too... anywhoozits, a little coloring and voila. Or as they say on etsy, "wa-laa!" I mean... Ok, now I'm doing that thing I do after my excitement has worn away and I'm looking at it on the blog and it's starting to look ... unicorny. Shit.

 Whatev, look at all the crap I done been making.

This one I rubbed most of it off to let the gold glow through. 

This one is all about the links! You know, to connect it to stuff.

 And this one! It was just another variously broken antique bronze escutcheon bracelet and now it's a big gay rainbow! And since y'all's comments put ideas in my head, the clasp is colored light blue with some eyeshadow I never did manage to rock. No I didn't mean to break it, it's just hard to hammer bronze without breaking it and to heat it up enough to bend I think you have to make it molten or something... I've already discussed my torch issues so no fucking foundry of molten bronze in my little condo...

 Now, the only reason my hand looks that clean is because I took the picture 1st thing this morning before it was covered with grime and blood and the guts of sacrificed innocents.

Even some finished babies!

And also some rezy-rez!

I found a book I got ages ago called... whatsitcalled... alchemy mysticism blah blah imagery blah...  I got it for the pix, forgot it, found it, and anyways, here's some resin:

By now there's already metal backings going on with most of these. I got a gold foil background I'm working on with these on the left. And some black against which the powders will look sorta star-cluster-y. Nebulish.

With galactic backgrounds...

 

(The royals here are all the same couple- the  

male/female duality of existence, siblings that did the

 horizontal mambo to create the universe. I know, ew.)

With this crazy fusible film imbedded.

Two pix to show how the color with the  movement and the changing.

Embedded with wrinkles to look like rays. Rays!

I've always had a thing for rays. They're like, lines of energy going out toward infinity. *tosses glitter up, looks at you mysteriously*

And when you move the piece around you can give yourself a seizure. Awwwyeahhhh. (Any clue how hoard it is for me to keep dog hairs out of these? Hm?)

And also some just regular pendants.

Lol. This is my 'just regular'.

And! An actual necklace:

Open it aaaaand:

 

KAPOW!

And then I found this cool video. Now you look at it.

Earth from Michael König on Vimeo.

Oh, and thanks for the feedback on kits. I've been gathering some up and it's already completely relieved my oversupply panic. You know what that means, right?
 Shooooopppiiinnnggg!!!!

Ring-a-Ding

A while ago I made a pair of necklaces of graduated rings, taking inspiration from the precious metal clay work of Kathy VanKleek. They were wonderfully received and so yeah, here's two more. 
Ceremonial Magic.
You can see I used a good bit of hammered Indian bangles, which are aluminum and super fun to hammer. I needed more to fill out the thing so in both pieces I used rings I made myself with metal, solder and pewter.
One is a looped piece of copper finding, one is a circular base metal finding, one is a wrappy hoop of steel wire which isn't the best thing to solder, and one is a piece of thin brass sheet for embossing like you do by rubbing a stylus on it that I folded a lot for thickness then curved into a ring. (In case you wanted to know all that.)

Ceremonial Magic II.
What I learned from the process is I hate working with a torch. It just freaks me out too much. I feel like I'm holding my breath the whole time it's on and I can't handle all the damned black goop that the flux and impurities create. Or maybe I was just doing it half-assedly and if I'd brought my pickle pot outside with me it would have come off easily and been less stressful. I dunno how those lampwork folks do it.
Plus just about any torch thing I've been able to do with a very hot iron, so... Or the embozzling which is like fake enamel which I do with just a heat gun. Speaking of which:
The dangling disc bits have the embozzling. (Just remembered the dangle on the 1st necklace does too.) I used a black powder that came with bits of glitter mixed in and a chunky silver on the very tip. I actually blew off a lot of the glitter before starting. Glitter can get fugly fast.

Well, you proly noticed a colorful metal treatment too. Hint- last time with the faux verdigris? That. Coupon for 25% off to whomsoever guesses what it is. Good for anything except tutes.
Here's another example. Oh such fun!See these globby babies? They're glass with a coating of UTEE.  They were cool but too regularly shaped. I did use them here  and here: though. So anyways you can see the cosmic thang's still going strong.

Among Empty Eternities.
Sorry Sparrow, but this eye is less freaky since the pod gives it eyelids, right? Filled it with many layers of resin. Had to wait til each dried before I could add more or it would just spill right out.
Simple hammered choker I'm digging.

Praise.
Here this was a dark leather cord but I whitened it with rub-n-buff. Why not? And the giant bead caps on the beaded bead have gold emboz.
Oh, all the pieces from last post are up, of course. Also felt like showing some WIP.

Maybe just cuz taking shots is less stressful ever since I got a decent battery charger. All the little things you do to make the process easier really add up.

Look at the maddest thing I've ever done! 

That's T-shirt yarn. I might wax it for a more leathery look. The tin wraps there are from the huge haul I was given right after returning from Uruguay. Finally got my lazy ass to chop up one of the tins. I'll maybe rust it up a bit but the colors are gorgeous. 

I also used that metal here. See the tiny orange bits? (Oh and the dangle is from readbetween, that kind of 70s style that always reminds me so much of Uruguay. It was you, right?)

And from that SAME haul (etsy's waterhand, the paper collector) these chandelier crystals. Behind just the lower sections with the ladies I've added gold leaf. Can't see it too well here but it adds this crazy brightness. Both the images were from my little art book Urufind and I only used resin to stick the surfaces on. That way when the resin cured I could wet and rub off the rest of the paper, apply more resin and have clear transfers. Which is why the gold works. Ehhh? Eehhh? See what I did thr? It's kinda crazy hard to just apply enough resin to stick the paper without seeping into said paper and it was a total mess and I loved it.

Some pendants:

I've had these tiny jet cabs forever and finally decided to do something with them. God knows what. I need more resin at the base but I ran out of mixing cups and I find they really are essential... Well, unless you are supernaturally good at eyeballing. Eyeballing is like free-balling but with less testicles.

There was surely something I meant to say... Well, don't forget about the coupon for correctly guessing my metal treatment(s). 

Aaaaand scene!

Insanium in the Cranium

Hey! HAPPYFALLOUT! I'm so happy(fallout) to hear from you! Look at these crazy insane graphics that she sent with her comment, everyone. I assume you've been deeply immersed in PhD madness? I wonder if I can get these printed super-high rez to use in more shooledy (as my mom pronounces jewelry).

OK, the images in the 1st pic especially.

The cool thing about the images I'm using here is that they're printed gorgeously on metallic paper. Once it gets resin-ified you can't see the metallic but you still have the gorgeous precision. Though maybe... maybe I need something that is aesthetic and represents the galaxies/nebula/etc, but isn't necessarily even precise? 

I've been mind wrestling with some poop lately. I seem to wanna incorporate a cosmic thing into my thing, but... like, I'm seeing cosmic images everywhere on tumblrs and places (though obviously, I go to the ones I'm interested in which means the ones that have tons of cosmic images) and I worry it may just be a bandwagon I fell into?

 But it is such a fantastic way to visualize all kinds of things I think/feel about existence and the universe. In fact, I should be original and deal with sub-microscopic images since that, too, is what I'm all about.  Basically anything of an unimaginable scale quite outside of our human one.

But have I been too lazy, is that it? Or is it that people aren't coming up with gorgeous images of the sub-microscopic biznazz like they are of the cosmic? Cuz when I search etsy for microscopic, I get microscope slides and 'cellular' I get cell phones covers. *chuckle*

OK, this one is about time- the impossibly old fossil from before flowers had even evolved- and space, or place- the compass.  So that's ... that....

I colored this citrine to combine with the image. Not bad. Today the light was crappy non-existent so these photos are extremely manipulated. I'm so manipulative with my photos, sheesh.

This certainly has nothing to do with anything.  But I did get to wrestle with steel wire trying to get it into that shape. I'm wondering if I should just start taking pix on fresh new copier paper each time. How much of my life have I spent erasing shit from my backgrounds. Wherever I go, dog hair and shmutz appears. All the papers I use are soon filthy. The corner where I take pix is by the window so my dog likes to break into my studio and stand right there, shedding all his awesomeness all over the area. I have tried cleaning it, it's just that infinite! I mean, if I could keep things clean, I'd be a whole different person.

I'm also thinking no more acrylic windows ever. They just make awful reflections for pictures, show glue and crap all over the edges and they're not really necessary in this instance.

Here I tried to cover the unattractive edge where the window fits in and I ended up with this ode to ugly:

I know, creepy baby. (Oh wait- just got a pro-baby comment from alteredarcheology! Wooo-hooo! Validation!) I can just tear out all the windows and maybe, I dunno, more leafing? Ugh, never done.

Although I couldn't stop myself from over-fixing the above, the round focal is kind of a mess. It needed resining but since I didn't have enough that needed resin to use up the smallest batch they recommend, I thought I'd cheat with some clear embossing powder. Not only did I manage to emboss my dinner table, This guy's full of bubbles and absolutely refuses to go smooth and normal. And I think I busted my heat gun. Waaaahhh! Should stick to Utee.

 Same with this one. There's all kinds of crap in the resin/emboss there. And the reflections make pix crap. And you can't see the lab on the arcs are super flashy b/c of the lack of sunlight. Etc, etc, whine, bitch, complain.

Managed to get crab guy installed upside-down. OK, at least that's an easy fix.

Managed to turn this:

Into this:

After trying every combination of every imaginable thing around me. 

And you thought 2 huge pictures was enough! Noooo, you're not getting through this bitchy post that easily!

And finally managed to do something pretty decent with this:

 Which previously was looking like a horrible flower.

 

And I whipped these below up after a lightbulb moment with some bracelet links anvilartifacts sent me just for no reason at all. (Though maybe it's pity cuz I'm such a whiny whiner.)

What's that you say? Something's up with the ear wires? Well they look perfectly fine to me. Sooorry miss fancy-pants who uses only un-pixelated, reality-based ear wires!
And now I'm going to go visit my mom whose gotten me into the habit of going over there for dinner each and every evening like some little kid who can't feed herself.