Finished Armor

             YAY! Armor: DONE! I'm quite satisfied with how it has turned out. The wings especially. 

I was confused, at first, with how I should've gone about making them. I made large left wing by cutting out the pieces in between the veins on the tag board, and then placing it on the vellum paper and tracing/cutting it out with an Exacto knife. Then, I taped it to the space where I cut out on the tag board. I did this one piece at a time. This was a laborious process and I wanted to find a different way to do it with the next wing. So, the process of the right wing was that I cut out all the peices between the veins on the tag board. I placed the tag board on the vellum paper and traced on the inside of the pieces. This proved to be much faster than what I had originally done. The underwings I had made pure gold so I did the same process I did with the right wing. 

              We bought the red shirt at a dollar general and I painted it at home. I painted the little honeycomb in class, which was a lot fun. It was like a little mini project, but I will admit that painting was a bit of a distraction. Nonetheless, I got it done with my armor and I'm happy with it. 

In Progress: Armor

         

            This is the beginning of my armor. Using the hand as a size reference, you can tell that these will be pretty large. They stretch from my shoulders to mid-thigh. I'm planning on use wire to shape the wings. Don't know exactly how I'm going to go about that. 

            

             I'm going to spray paint a sheet of vellum paper gold. The top will be pure gold, and as it goes down the paper the gold will fade into the vellum papers actual color. I'm going to cut out the shapes in between the veins of the wings and use them as patterns to cut out the pieces of gold paper. I'll place the cut pieces into their place between the veins.  So the endgame is to make the wings gradate from gold to the vellum paper.

            

          Since this armor will be portraying the bee queens armor after the war, sung about in Dirty Paws by Of Monster and Men, this has a possibility of being on the crown. Maybe I'll make the honey combs into jewels. Not entirely sure yet. Nonetheless, I'm excited to continue working on this.  

Finished!

                      This is my finished stained glass project. To be honest, I am really proud of it. It took me a long time and a lot of precise grinding but it was worth it. One side has all the iridescent part of the glass and when it hits the light, it shines exactly how I wanted it to. The sautering could have been better and neater, and it is a bit asymmetrical. But it is what it is and I still am proud of it. I'm going to give it as a gift. Since the wings are based off the logo of one of my favorite podcasts, Nightvale, and my friend is a fan of it, I'm going to give it to them. Can't wait to get started on the next project

Art Warrior Project

       So, we were given a new project of creating art warrior armor. We were to base our armor on a published work of art. Like a song or painting. One part of this project is that we had to have a "use of a repetitive unit" on the armor.

       I have based my project on the Of Monsters And Men song "Dirty Paws" which has been a favorite of mine for many years.  This song is about a war between the birds and the bees. Here are some lyrics.

The forest of talking trees,
They used to sing about the birds and the bees.
The bees had declared a war,
The sky wasn't big enough for them all.

The forest that once was green
Was colored black by those killing machines.
But she and her furry friends
Took down the queen bee and her men.

         I am planning on doing the armor of the bees after they lost the war. In the middle of the chest plate.  I will paint a huge gash representing their loss.The plate will be made out of pieces of carboard and they'll be painted to look like honeycombs. The wings I have multiple ideas with the wings. So I haven't chosen how to do them yet. The skirt will be a fabric that I'll paint to look metallic.

         I am having a lot of fun with this so far. I hope everything will turn out. But, ya know, it doesn't always. Things change. But that's ok. Let's get ARTING!

New Stained Glass Project

           

            

               So, our new project we are looking at making our own stained glass designs. I've designed a dragonfly, consisting of 28 pieces. Many of them being extremely small. I'd hoped that we'd have black glass for the body, but we don't have any. So I will probably end up using dark brown. I've designed the wings to look like the logo for my favorite podcast Nightvale. The logo is below.

              I will make the moons in the design easier to grind. Because of its curve and the size of the grinder, I'll need to reshape the wings a bit. And I'm sure that the body will be somewhat easier but difficult in its own way.

Part 2!

        

           This is the finished piece. Continuing what I said in the last post, after you take the paper off you should put the pieces together in the pattern it was meant to be in. Then you dry fit it; try to fill the gaps in where you ground off too much or too little. Once you have done that, you'll need to foil the edges. Flatten the foil down to make it stay. Foiling is what I had finished doing in the picture in the last post. Then you will need to sauter the edges and creases in the pattern. and then sauter the ring to the top. If you want, you can put patina on the sauter, which is what I have done. Patina makes the silvery look of the sauter turn copper. After all this, slap some wax on it, wait until it hazes, and wash it off. Then BOOM, you got yourself a stained glass wonder.

On To Stained Glass!

                      We've begun stained glass. . . and finished it. Well, I have finished. I was so caught up in it, that I forgot to make a post! And I really am having fun, especially with this. I'll go through the process with you. First, you have to draw out your pattern, or if it's already drawn up, start drawing another one to use as a guide for your pieces of glass. Cut the second pattern out. You want to start picking out the glass you want to use. Once you have chosen, glue pieces you have cut out of your pattern next to the edge of the glass. Carefully cut it out and cut any extra pieces before you start grinding. Vaseline the paper on the pieces so they don't fly off. When you grind, keep the piece flat on the board. and grind all the way to the paper piece. Once you have done it with all the pieces, soak them in water for about ten minutes so the paper will come off easy. And that's it for now. I'll explain the rest in my next post.