Put Weird and Weird Together...

and make it even weirder! New semesters always start out in such a way... Right off the bat we've got an alternative materials project.  I was expecting it to be a full project, and thus designed a big old piece for it:

It's this thing right here1

But it turned out that we were to be given a mystery packet of materials to use for  the project, and it would be due next class (in two days) and all we had to do was make some sort of body adornment, no rings.

I wound up with this foam stuff and thought it would be alright until I tried to scrunch the red sheet into an abstract flower. It was too thick to do it so I wound up cutting petals and sewing it together. That wasnt enough so I added a yellow center out of some other foam I had, and a greenish plastic flower I found on the ground somewhere. There still wasn't enough pouf to it so after flying to the craft store,

I got some ridiculous(ly expensive) green mesh ribbon to make it completly obnoxious. The piece is about a foot or so long, and sadly unloved in our peer rating/jurying thing. Perhaps I'll use it as a Christmas ornament this year, it uses magnets to pinch a shirt between it when wearing it on the shoulder, and therefore also sticks to any metallic surface. Just don't put any electronics near it.

For our next and last go at making alternative material body adornment we got to see what was in the next set of packets, and the majority of them were Lego based. This pic has some of them in it, while the others are arranged into this:

I am liking this necklace so far, but it is so hard to not just mash the Legos together and call it a day. Similarly I'm having trouble working up the urge to ruin the little Micro Machines car, though I have no idea where I'd work it into the piece. The long Legos that make up the drop of the pendant will be spray painted light blue but beyond that who knows? I feel bad that I cannot come up with ways to use more of the materials, like I'm supposed to. Maybe matching earrings? Nothing to do but get back to it, I guess...

Vroom! Vroom!

Totally Tumblr!

I have a Tumblr account mostly because a friend of mine discovered the site about a year ago. I'll spare the world and not link to mine, since its is mostly regurgitation of stuff already on there and very little original content (one of my few posts was linking to this small play through of an indie roguelike shooting game thing that I still haven't had a chance to play though you can download it free here.) But, if you find the right blogs to follow on Tumblr you can find some cool art and inspiration for your own work like:

These awesome rings by Sarah Hood who's website is here. She appears to do a lot of work with organic forms and I like the simple and clean layout of her site. Plus, I'm also a sucker for the cool use of the railroad modelling landscape bits. I always see the little model trees at A.C. Moore's or Hobby Lobby and want them so so so bad, especially the orange trees, but have no idea what I would actually make with them. On the subject of railroad modeling here's a video that I found and am shamelessly stealing from a Cracked article:

Beyond impressive for a medium, for lack of a better term, that has always been considered a kid's plaything. Apparently I am highly amused by miniature things, which I suppose is a benefit in jewelry making! As for more inspirational materials pertaining to my theme of Fun and Games (possibly just Games now) I haven't wandered across anything else yet, so it seems appropriate to cap this off with a quote from the Art Student Owl describing my current frustrations: