Friday, June 30, 2017

2017 TBAI Gallery Piece – The Story & Photos

The story is very brief. It is about a little bear, dressed as a green dragon on a scavenger hunt. He has a list of items he needs to collect. One item he has difficulty finding is a dragon egg. Where, oh where, does one go to get a dragon egg? He opts to visit the cottage of the most reputable dragon nurturer. He has heard that she is quite good at getting the dragon eggs to hatch and if he is lucky he might even see a baby dragon. Once at the cottage, he is invited in and is amazed by all the wonders, especially the baby dragons in their tiny houses and all the potions and concoctions. Will the witch help him procure the last item on his list?

Here are a few photos of “The Scavenger Hunt”.

A view of the piece with the bears in place but no lights on.

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With the lights on.

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Without the bears.

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And with the lights on.

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Here are the bears.  You can’t see the dragon spikes too well in this photo but he has some little ones and some cool dragon wings.  The witch has some concoctions dangling from her dress and wears a dragon charm necklace.

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A close-up of a few of the bottles on the table.

Doesn’t every witch’s cottage have a book like this?

Part of the library stacked on the floor.

One of two dragon sconces on the walls.

Some of the bottles and potions hanging from the ceiling.

One of the shelves.  I tried to make sure each individual shelf had at least one book.  After all, you don’t earn a good reputation as a dragon nurturer without being well read.

I hope you enjoyed seeing how this piece came together and that the final result was worth the wait!  Thank you for your patience while I gathered and edited photos for these posts.  I am nearly finished getting ready for our trip to the Japan Teddy Bear Show.  I’m hoping to get some good photos!  Wish us luck.  Each of us knows about two words of Japanese but I hear the people are lovely.  Sebastian is so excited he’s about to bust a seam. 

Thanks so much for reading!

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Tuesday, June 27, 2017

2017 TBAI Gallery Piece – Details

This blog post is brought to you by my husband, Jay. I say that because when I started to work on the photos that go with it, the disc they were on went “Poof!” Suddenly, no photos. No photos! All the photos I took throughout the course of this project disappeared, but with Jay’s amazing ingenuity, I now have photos to share. I’d tell you how he recovered them, but I don’t know how he did it! And that disc is now residing in File 13. On to the photos.

Dragon eggs figure prominently in my concept.  Here is how I began creating the dragon eggs for the dragon egg incubators.

Followed by several layers of paint.

And the final eggs.

Here is a sneak peek at how I wanted this shelf arranged
but the bottles and small dragon house have not been finished.

A bit of paint on four assembled baby dragon houses.

And those pristine bottles have been roughed up a bit.

I wanted extra security for adhering the table in place,

so I added some nails and made corresponding holes in the floor.
That way the glue would not be the only thing holding it in place.

The table adequately secured:

A few more smaller dragon eggs

which can be found in a bowl on the table.  I tweaked this arrangement
a little bit before calling it done.

There were many more little steps in each detail but I think you get the idea. My next blog post will be  the story and photos of the piece in its entirety.  Thanks for hanging in there for the evolution of it!  Until next time,

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Saturday, June 24, 2017

2017 - TBAI Gallery Piece – Installment 3

Actually this post could easily be called The Middle Hodgepodge Photos which would be entirely accurate. These work-in-progress photos show several different aspects of pulling this piece together little by little. Let’s start with the most mundane and work our way up from there. It’s the simple screw eye. I have them in several sizes and metal finishes but sometimes I just need them in a color that I haven’t located or taken the time to search for. So I go to my stash of spray paint and get to work.

I needed all those screw eyes for these bottles and

miscellaneous trinkets.  In fact, I only guessed how many screw eyes I would need and ended up with exactly one left over.

This shows the start of the maddening process of attaching all the pieces to the ceiling.

 

It is one of the reasons I didn’t have all the walls permanently secured.

I also worked on these lights/lanterns which needed to be variously painted,  drilled, wired, glued and assembled.

A piece of plastic to create a dragon egg incubator.

I made three of them.  Actually, I made four but one was a trial run which was a bust.

Here I am checking to see if I will be able to get the crystals arranged
in the incubators in a way that will work.

A different view.

More paint for the roof shingles.

A view of the top and back before the roof is attached.

Details.

I needed some grubby candles for some candle holders so I made them from polymer clay.  I’m glad they didn’t have to be neat & clean.  I didn’t have the patience!

Stay tuned.

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Wednesday, June 21, 2017

2017 TBAI Gallery Piece – CMMC

Here I am with another set of in-progress photos of my gallery piece for TBAI. Looking back through these photos I am reminded of how many little decisions I had to make in creating it. For each item that I included, there was never a straight forward “let’s add this”. It was more like this:

“I think these unfinished wood jar shapes would be useful.”
“How many should I use?”
“They will need to be painted.”
“Which color will be the base?”
“What color do I paint the top?”
“What color do I use for a wash?”
“How will they be suspended?”
“If they are hanging from a chain, how will it be attached?”
“If I use a screw eye, then it needs to be painted too.”

It’s called the crazy-making method of creation. CMMC for short.

On to the photos!

The building is on its side in the picture.  I must have been gluing the uprights in place.

Getting to the point of adding the paper to the sides was a morale booster.  A bit of pattern and color goes a long way in helping me believe progress is being made.

The back with the shelves secured and sides are in place.  Yippee!

In this photo, I am testing out the arrangement and placement of one of the lights I want to use.  The skeleton hand holding it is one of my favorite details.

The roof shingles needed to be lined up and glued in place.

Then it was time to paint them – several times.

These two tables also needed paint.
The round one is made from a small round box lid and a wooden spindle.

The round table is finished in the color and style I was after.
The rectangular table will be painted the same.

And yes, that is a hole in the round table.  Turns out you can put a hole all the way through a wood spindle if you are careful.

These are those wooden jars I mentioned earlier.  First coat.

And finished but without labels.  I also aged some silver bells

and carved a tiny pumpkin into a tiny jack-o’-lantern.

More to come.

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