Tea from an Octopus, and Other Lovely Things.

This beautiful Octopus Teapot is todays entry into the cabinet of curiosities.  While I understand that it’s copper, and therefore you can’t really drink from it, the concept is wonderful.

The artist behind the teapot is Miel-Margarita Paredes, who also created the Luna Moth tea Infuser below. As the less appreciated cousins of butterflies, moths hold a special fascination for me. I even worked them into a hand embroidered corset.

I feel all things should be beautiful, no matter how mundane their purpose. Perhaps Miel-Margarita Paredes feels the same?

 

Delicious Displays!

Salutations!
I do hope 2012 is treating you well thus far.

While my blog has been lacking posts I certainly haven’t been idle. With Aethercon taking place this Saturday the 11th I’ve been crafting some gorgeous display stands.

The presentation of goods is so important. Beautiful displays lend character and interest to your items, inviting the viewer to take a little of your created world home with every purchase. Lacklustre presentation can drag even the most appealing items into the  depths of dullness. Not exactly the impression we’re going for.

I designed my displays to have the appeal of a curio cabinet in a lush Victorian home, enticing the viewer with texture and opulence. (As you may notice from the numerous photographs, I’m very please with the tree!)

My furry textured jewellery tree

A tiny visiting owl

Jewellery tree and matching card holder

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A little bird told me...

Medals nestle on framed padded fabric

Visit Cog & Compass on facebook to view new stock and pretties.

 

 

Doyle – The Black Dragon

Greetings friend, and welcome back!

Doyle here is the last baby dragon I’ll introduce for a wee while. I feel we need to vary our conversation somewhat, but I’m sure we’ll get back to dragons later.

Doyle was born to celebrate the engagement of two friends of mine, Tim and Tarah ( who just happen to be dragon fans themselves, little did I know Tarahs’ engagement ring bears a tiny dragon!). Being of the dark and brutal persuasion, Tim and Tarah needed a dark and brutal dragon. Enter a spiked and winged beast in metal tones, heating its cold blood upon a sun warmed rock.

In Mythology throughout the world, black dragons are associated with power, strength and evil. In China there are tales of the Four Dragons. Of these four, the Black Dragon represents power and strength, and is charged with supporting the pillars of Heaven. However Chinese black dragons also have a reputation for mischief and wicked deeds (but Doyle isn’t like that!).

After forming the basic dragon body I textured it with a steel brush, for a rough dragon skin texture.  Doyle was the first dragon where I used a wire armature to support wings. It’s sooo much trickier than I imagined. A good 45 minutes of swearing accompanied the creation of a suitable frame from fine wire ( a suitable frame somewhat resembling half an inside -out umbrella).  I then implanted the stems of these frames into Doyle’s body. Honestly it wasn’t as painful for the poor fellow as it sounds! Once firmly in place I coated the frames with a very thin layer of polymer clay (another task accompanied by much swearing). Wing creation is certainly not a process for those lacking patience, or possessed of sanity.

Now Doyle needed to be one Heavy Metal dragon. Blending a palette of blacks, silvers and pearlescent white I gave him garb of spikes, scales and horns. The scales on his brow ridge lead your eye up to his horns, and are formed in the same way as scales on Xipil the fire salamander.  While he’s looking pretty epic now, I feel there’s something lacking.

A BEARD! Timmy has a beard that may or may not be a refugee Wookie. Doyle needs a beard too! Maybe a slightly more refined, Lung dragon style beard though…

Oh and a heart. Doyle is an an engagement dragon after all.

I couldn’t bear to put a tacky, Valentine red heart next to such a badass metal dragon. It took quite a while to mix the perfect red – deep but not too black, not too brown (it only takes a little too much black to turn any colour brown). Engraved with Tim and Tarah’s initials, the heart has become Doyle’s treasure, and he guards it fiercely!

Beware the black dragon, for you are crunchy, and taste good with ketchup! ( plus assorted other condiments…)

 

Nithhogr- The Bone Serpent

This is Nithhogr, a baby bone serpent. As small and wary as he may appear, I can assure you he’s a direct descendant of the original Nithhogr . Devourer of corpses, a great Norse serpent who gnawed at the roots of the world tree Yggdrasil,  Nithhogr was one badass  mythical creature!

I created Nithhogr as a birthday gift for my friend Andy ( a member of the very talented band Cripple Mister Onion). Inspired by Andy’s own bone carvings, and confronted by a large pile of animal bones currently residing in my bathtub, a bovine vertebrae was my prop of choice .

As with Xipil, Nithhogr is crafted from polymer clay mixed to a hue consistent with the dragon’s character  - in this case an aged ivory tone. After following my basic process for sculpting the serpent’s body and limbs it was time to get creative!

Following the Norse style of serpent (a serpent simply being a non- winged dragon species), I wanted Nithhogr to have long, delicate styling. A turned up muzzle with flared nostrils and a pair of  graceful horns elongated his head. A line of tiny metal spikes accentuate the length and serpentine curves of Nithhogr’s body. (Those spikes gave me no end of trouble! Too small to apply by hand, and very unwilling to cooperate with my tweezers). The spikes are actually the tiny leftover bits of metal you often find in bags of screws – and people say my hoarding isn’t useful!

As fantastic as these features were, something was needed to tie them all together. A generous spattering of sand-ish scales did the trick I think.  Although an unconventional scale shape, their organic simplicity unified Nithhogrs’ existing                                                                                          features.

Twenty agonising minutes later and my latest baby was removed finished from the oven. My worries that the bone would discolour or become otherwise munted were luckily unfounded! One paranoid packaging and car trip later and Nithhogr was delivery safely to the hands of his new owner.

 

Xipil – The Noble of Fire

Good morrow curious travellers!

Introducing Xipil. Inspired by mythic lore regarding salamanders and their affinity with fire, this wee fellow is my favourite baby dragon.

Unlike their amphibious real world counterparts, the mythical salamander is seen as the elemental of fire. Leonardo da Vinci proclaimed that

“This has no digestive system, and gets no food but from the fire, in which it constantly renews its scaley skin.”

In early China fabric woven from ‘salamander hair’ was claimed to be fireproof (sounds pretty cool huh, what a pity it turned out to be asbestos). It’s thought the association between our slimy buddies and fire stems from their habit of hibernating inside rotting logs. When the logs were brought inside and thrown on the fire, the salamanders promptly made their escape – causing onlookers to assume they born out of the flames.

Not to be predictable or anything, but reds and golds seemed a suitable colour palette for my fire elemental. To capture the shape and movement of fire, I individually mixed the colour for each scale, blending them to create a flow of colour that highlighted the dragons form – cloaking him with a thousand tiny licks of flame.

Surprisingly this process didn’t drive me slowly irreversibly mad as it would 99% of the population. It was actually a very meditative ten hours .

If you attempt a dragon, or any other beastie in this style, I suggest you build him on a prop. In this case I used a small liqueur bottle. Having a prop gives you something to hold onto, making it considerably easier to work on your sculpture without squishing parts you’ve already finished.

(Believe me, nothings breaks your brain like realising your wayward fingertip just smooshed two hours of work!).

I’m lucky enough to have a full set of clayworking tools to help with the fiddly bits. If you don’t, never fear, a needle and a butter knife will do just as well for adding texture and details. If you have long fingernails these are incredibly helpful for smoothing difficult areas with leaving tool marks.

Fire elementals were originally the stuff of myths and alchemists’ labs. Xipil however resides in my living room – where he plays around our many candles, and we try and keep him away from the fire staff!

 

Giving Birth to Baby Dragons

Phew, I’ve been hacking away at this post for a week and a half now! I’m still new to this blogging business, and talking about myself is much harder than originally imagined.

I’ve been trying to explain how I give birth to baby dragons (figuratively of course, literally would be most unpleasant!). Gestated as concepts, I bring the little beasties to life in polymer clay. I love polymer clay- but that’s a tale for another time.  Dragoncrafting is my hobby, my meditation. Existing in a reality of our own imagining, dragons are unconstrained by the laws of logic and science. They are shaped entirely by our whims and dark dreamings, and as such encourage creative freedom.

My dragon breeds are shaped by my surroundings- coaxed out of the clay as skinks and geckos, garbed in the colours and textures of New Zealand’s sands and seas. I create them for stories, for people, and for me.  Although I have a basic technique for building their bodies and limbs, their details and personalities develop organically as I work.

Next time we talk I’ll introduce some of my dragons.Stay and hear their stories. Meet their people. Discover the secrets to creating them. Maybe you’ll be inspired, after all, giving birth to baby dragons isn’t as painful as it sounds!

(If you’re wondering why baby dragons specifically, it’s because they’re easier to control than their adult counterparts, and they haven’t realised I’ll taste good with ketchup!).