Iridescent - Tumblr Posts
New mask! It works with glasses! I went for an angular superhero sort of quality to it. For color I tried interference blue paint over the red which ended up feeling very Wonder Woman-esque to me. I’m not really well-versed enough in superheros though to know whose mask this matches best in shape.
Previously I’d tried this design with the bottom portion disconnected, tapering to points on either side of the nose. Which I thought looked cool, but it was impossible to form and get to stay in place while it was drying. So it never worked out. But I’m pretty happy with this modification to the design!
Glow-in-the-dark tentacle collar! This project has been sitting on my back burner for way too long, it’s finally time to put it out into the world. The design was a scaled-up version of a bracelet design I made quite a while ago, substituting a buckle for a snap.
The fancy thing I set out to do here was to paint the suckers with glow-in-the-dark acrylic, then stain the leather over that, so the paint acted as a resist for the stain, leaving it lighter than the surrounding leather. I did that with a base coat of green, then on top of that all painted blue and green interference paints to give it an iridescence.
The issue was that the suckers on the tips of the tentacles are freaking tiny! It took a lot of concentration to paint them accurately. Then I had to do like 4 coats to get a thick even coating of paint to make the glow look good. It took hours and hours of really eye-crossing up-close work.
I do like this idea rather a lot, but if I’m going to make another I’ll need to re-draw the design with bigger tentacle details so I don’t drive myself crazy with the painting. So this particular collar will remain a unique one-off.
If you’d like it, drop me an offer. I’ll probably post it up on Etsy in a few days, but that’ll take coming up with a price that both seems fair to me and isn’t way too high for the customer.
4-5 oz vegetable-tanned leather, laser-cut and etched, nickel-plated buckle and rivets, water-based leather stain, acrylic paints.
Just a couple of my mask designs. “Swirling Wisps” on the left, “Techno Holes” on the right.
Progress shots of a new dragon mask! Showing the end result first. I really like how the whole thing came together.
This was a modification/simplification of the full-head dragon mask I made a bit over a year ago. I shrunk it down so it was just a face mask, not whole head, with some adjustments and fixes to the shaping along the way. I pulled it in closer to the head relative to the big one, so it no longer has space to wear glasses, which is a bit of a bummer, but the proportions were just too weird when I tried to maintain that. I laser-cut the pieces out of 6 oz vegetable-tanned leather, which is just a bit thicker than what I typically use, and had a really nice solidity to it.
After much deliberation, I went with an iridescent blue finish for an aquatic look. It's a translucent acrylic paint, applied over 3 different base colors, though the middle one wasn't as differentiated as I'd hoped.
For the eyes I used an acrylic plastic with a subtle sheen of green, that reflects somewhat different colors depending on the angle of the light.
The last step will be to make the straps to buckle it on with.
Here’s the new dragon hood mask! The surface is finished with a range of shimmery blues, and the eyes are an acrylic plastic that reflects green and blue from certain angles.
I'll have this for sale at my table at Arisia this coming weekend, and afterwards I'll put it up on Etsy. (Either directly if this one doesn’t sell, or for custom orders if it does.)
I still need to come up with a more specific descriptor of this design. The blues really emphasize the aquatic feel, and the swooping seams between the pieces remind me a bit of a dolphin or orca. I’ve already got a mask design that I call a sea dragon though...
It’s made of 6 oz vegetable-tanned leather, which is a bit thicker than what I normally use. I really like the weight and stiffness it gave though. Makes the whole thing feel very solid. The pieces are cut with a laser cutter, then wet-formed, dyed, painted, and riveted together by hand. Progress shots of the build are here.
It buckles on with 5 straps. The ones shown in the photos are snagged from the cat mask that I’ve also finished up recently (and apparently haven’t posted yet), because the blue shiny ones that will match this mask were still drying when I went to take photos.
This insectoid leather mask is nothing but huge bug eyes and antennae. The big housefly eyes have an iridescent green sheen, and the antennae glow in the dark.
It fits over glasses, too! A bit hard to see them in the photo though.
4 oz vegetable-tanned leather, cut with a laser cutter, dyed black, and painted with acrylics.
This aquatic dragon’s streamlined profile helps it cut through the waters smoothly, and its shimmery blue coloration lets it blend in and evade detection as it stalks its prey.
The mask is made of relatively thick 6 oz vegetable-tanned leather. That thickness is a bit much for a lot of the more delicate stuff I do, but it gave this a really nice solidity and heft.
The eye pieces are an iridescent acrylic plastic that reflects greens and yellows depending on angle, and is rose-tinted when looking through it.
I'm feeling really happy with the riveted style I've been working out with these masks. It still always makes me think of like metal panels assembled into a submarine, or something like that. Always gives a bit of a steampunk slant to the aesthetic.
As for overall concept/form/vibe, I feel like I’m doing a good job of hitting my target of the uncanny valley between fursuits and pup hoods. Which means I’m never really sure if there are enough people who want this sort of thing for it to be viable. But I like them, and I think it’s good to push a greater variety of ideas out into the world.
Previously seen here, and assembly photos here.
And it’s up for sale on my Etsy shop!
A pair of heat-colored titanium dragon scale bracelets that I finished up last night. Doing the colors on these is always a joy--you heat them up over a flame until they glow orange, and the oxidation makes a beautiful spectrum of blues and purples.
Also, it turned out I hadn't made one of these in the wide style for a long time, so I updated the Etsy listing to include that option.
Owl mask - one in tropical colors, one with peacock iridescence.
I don’t consider myself particularly practiced with painting textures, but I was pretty happy with how the sparkling blues and greens came out on this one. This copy sold at Anthro New England before I was able to get photos of it being worn.
Available on my Etsy shop!
flower beetle polish mixing
Tropical Pool - Poolhouse An illustration of a large island-style tile house with a uniquely shaped infinity pool
Huevember day 25 catchup: fancy beetle wants to know.
Iridescence
"Plastic Hearts (Part I)"
PNGs of pink iridescent plastic hearts. Photos taken by me, then turned into pngs with GIMP.
[They are intended to be used as a resource, for example for moodboards or digital collages. You don't have to, but I'd be very happy if you credited and/or tagged me if you use them, I would love to see what they get used for!]
I saw these at a store in August and just had to get them and make some pngs out of them. They are so kitschy, I love it.
There is going to be a part 2; I just had so many pngs that I didn't want to put them all into one post.
Iridescent: A Poetry Collection
That’s the name of my Poetry Collection on Wattpad! Go check it out! Just passed 3K reads on the first book of the series!
Excited to share this item from my shop: Bronze Key Earrings #bronze #keys #purple #iridescent https://etsy.me/3nWSd7c (at Indianapolis, Indiana) https://www.instagram.com/p/CV3O2xDP4nS/?utm_medium=tumblr