Tuesday, February 16, 2010

J2.Project 1. Inspiration

"Nightmares" by Eterna2 from Deviant Art
"Painted Roses" by Autonoe from Deviant Art
"Peril of the Guardian" by Alector Fencer
"Take me the Ship of my Dreams" by Osokin on Deviant Art
image search from google
"In This Land of Dreams" from Deviant Art (artist unknown)
google search image for nightmares
"Alternate Nightmares" by Gaarathehated; Deviant Art
google search of dream catchers
google search for dreams
I realized I never really posted the images I am working with for my project. So here are some of the ideas I am thinking about for Dreams. So above is the images I want to draw from.

A Little Creative Caffeine on Natural Hardening

I was trying to figure out how to make buttons for my current little pet project in materials (pun intended sorry folks!) and I wanted to keep the buttons made out of fur. It would be easy enough to model some out of bamboo or rock but what is the fun in that? So, I google'd how to make natural "plastics" and tried some at home. I am not really finished this little experiment but it was getting late last night so this is the progress thus far.



I guess you can call this the "making of" picture of the milk-based plastic. It smelled HORRIBLE (probably because I hate the smell of vinegar). Anyway, it was very think and crumble-y and not suited for this at all. I don't even think I could mold it into shapes. I have a few possible reasons in my head it didn't work; mostly I think there was not enough milk fat in the milk I used to produce curds. I am not sure exactly how it works but, let's just say this didn't. Also, it shrunk the wool ball by half it's size! That to me is a huge waste of fur.


This was fun. I took a homemade candle that I made a few days ago and impregnated the wool ball with it. It made the ball a little larger and it was pretty hard instantly. Foreseeable problem is cracking. I was hoping that my throughly coating the entire ball with wax it would fix this problem. I have to test that later tonight.

This one was pretty successful. It is just needle felted into a ball shape. I think its pretty nice and one of my favorites of the tests. It remains soft and easy to handle and retains roughly the same size and shape as the basic "felted ball". I am concerned about it breaking down with use though.

This is my favorite of all of them. It is creamer and lemon-juice "homemade plastic" (There is a video below of the making of). The plastic started out as a nice "paste" and you could just roll and squish the wool ball into it. It was nice and squishy until it started to harden. It kinda looked like a white milkdud when I was done (weird comparison I know) but, it seems the easiest to do and has the possibility for the most success I think.

***Update*** As of 8pm the cream-based plastic is still a bit squishy.
I tried to potato-based one. Basically it creates starch. I do not have an oven or the glycerin so I got a little creative and we will see how it goes.

Here is a little video of making cream-based plastic. Its just creamer (half and half) and lemon juice.