Earth and Fire

Photobucket has been hacked. No worries! It’s being resolved as we speak and the pretties should be back in no time!!!

I finally bit the bullet and downloaded Apophysis. I’m wondering how, exactly, I managed to tolerate going this long without it! This was done with a fractal from Apophysis, edited in Pixia.

I’m actually very proud of how this turned out!

Another with Derwent Graphitint. I love those things.

I’m having a lot of fun experimenting with the freeform swirl designs. I think some of them would make awesome tattoos.

Do I even need to give the disclaimer about my scanner anymore?

The swirling raindrop/flame idea is one I’ve been toying with for a while. I may just turn some variant of it into a tattoo at some point. I have no idea why I threw the moon symbolism in there. It seemed like a good idea at the time…If you look really close you might find some unintentional symbolism in there as well.

Derwent Graphitint. I apologize for the crappy scan, with the usual disclaimer: “my scanner is an asshole”.

This was made on Imbolc. It was supposed to go on my shrine to Brighid, but it’s too big to fit there properly. I may do some rearranging to day and make it work.

This is a regular glass bottle that sparkling cider came in. I painted the designs freehand in white. The design goes all the way around the bottle.

Acrylic on glass is not very ’sturdy’. As in, it scrapes off very easily, even when dry. Acrylic was not made to go on glass, however for something purely decorative, it works out OK. Just have to be careful when handling it.

I was experimenting with “tribal style” artwork again. I love tribal!! I think these would make awesome tats, at least, individually. They are colored pencil.

I finally figured out the trick to getting rid of those crummy scanner shadows!

This is a cropped version, for two reasons: first, my scanner is an asshole. Second, I just happen to like the close cropped version better. The “choppiness” is due to resizing during posting…sorry about that.

This did not turn out at all like I had envisioned. Even so, it’s really starting to grow on me!! At first I was not happy with it at all, but the longer I have it, the more I like it. So I thought I’d post it anyway.

This is my first attempt at using ArtClay Silver. It’s an ambitious first attempt I must admit…and I shouldn’t have expected it to come out quite like I had envisioned. I had a lot of problems with it. First a bit of plastic somehow got in there and caused the loop to break when I tried to remove it. Nearly destroyed the whole thing. Then I dropped it on the floor (still wet, mind you.) The clay dried too fast. It exploded the first time I tried to fire it (I was able to fix it, fortunately, with some new clay.)

The stone is a red-orange sapphire. It isn’t oxidized, I cheated and used india ink. You didn’t hear it from me. The cord is cotton “loop braided”.

I spent two or three hours on this, so clearly I have WAY too much time on my hands!!

I LOVE MY NEW DREMMEL!!!!

This was created from a random blue partially tumbled stone that I had laying around the house. The rose is etched in using a Dremmel and colored with colored pencil (I LOVE how my colored pencils will actually stick to stone!!)

Drilling it was a pain in the ass, and I don’t think I’ll try to drill stone again (I ended up using a cone-shaped etching ‘bit’ for most of the hole. My drill bit definitely lost it’s temper as it started *glowing* trying to drill the stone). Thanks to a lot of superglue (I love superglue) the headpin is secure in the stone, but I don’t think I’ll be wearing it much at all. It’s currently a window decoration.

It’s strung with seed beads, silver round beads, and rainbow obsidian beads.

This goes on the rear view mirror of my car. It stands for protection during travel (and was inspired by a rather harrowing journey home from work in a snowstorm the other day…and another snow/ice storm happening right now. I officially hate snow…sure is pretty though.)

Copper, Swarovski crystals and pearls, and little copper beads. If you care to notice there are 12 little copper beads, and 7 bigger beads. (and three knots…but you can’t see the third one in the picture).