Another journal

Bah, well, I got two solid pieces done this month, which ain’t bad.  I finished another and decided that the fourth is something that failed, but has an idea I can come back to.

Thing to note: you can take two plastic plano-convex lenses from any sort of lensy toy and put the flat sides together you get a magnifying lens that is pretty rad.  Be careful though. Plastic lenses scratch and scuff easily.

Another note: egg carton bits are perfect eye pieces.

The failed one I do want to examine again, theory/idea wise because I want to ease back into needle/fiber work. Until then, this thing goes in the aborted idea bin.

Not a spectacular finish to the focus month, but not bad, in the scheme of things. I do have a plan for October, I’ll let you in on it in a bit.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

Only ten days left in the month and I’ve only two of my hoped-for four eyepiece things done.  That is fine! Now that TBA (a ten-day art fest that we went to almost every day) is over I can hopefully whip them out.

The first one I wanted to go as far away as I could from steampunk-ness.  It’s a costume piece, not a useful one, but I like it.  I had endless fun creating the density of surface embellishment.

There’s movement to the red lens, at least, which I like.

The second piece is super useful and more utilitarian.

It magnifies like a badass.

Chase took all the pretty pictures and if you click through to Flickr there’s a quick summary of what materials are in each one.

Anyway, here’s the thing.  I made these to make them because I like to make things.  But I don’t want them.  Do you want them? I’m thinking $25 each (which includes shipping) to take these dang things off my hands.  Each one took about a complete day of work to put together, so that’s a stupid good deal. No takers and I’ll toss them up on Etsy.

Update: The feather one is called for!
Update 2: The magnifying one is called for!  Do not be sad, I will hopefully have two more by the end of the month!

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.

Sometimes, when I’m drinking or just being a jackass, I tell people “I gave the American steampunks* the monoggle.” Which isn’t necessarily true, though it’s probably at least a little bit close to what is truth (there were fancy-ass ones being made in Europe, that stupid word wasn’t being used so much though the design was, etc.).

A lot of cameras go through our house and not all of them leave. I really like taking things apart and how lenses work fascinate me.

I would use cold connections to make ridiculous eye wear out of bits of lens and camera that I’d reclaimed after hours of patiently taking apart something. So many broken twin lens reflexes have been dismantled by my hands.

Then one day I used papier mâché to make an eye cup, for some damned reason used “steampunk” as a tag and then the internet shat itself into my Flickr.

So I made a DIY.

Mind you, some nice things happened and I made some nice friends and got to write a mostly-ignored-but-enjoyed-by-people-I-like article about the use of papier mâché in the Victorian era for SteamPunk magazine.

But pretty much the whole thing (and the steampunks) were sort of a boner killer for the optics and lens stuff I’d been playing with. Which sucked because I loved doing it, but doing it made me feel kind of gross. I’d told myself something along the lines of “when people stop giving a shit about it, I’ll go back to it.”

I think it’s been long enough. So September’s focus month is optics and I’ve already got started and it’s funny how much I’d missed it. Useless things to put on your eyeballs, guyz. Pretty fucking fun to make.  Aiming for four finished pieces by the end of the month. We’ll see how it goes.

*There’s the folk who follow/do SteamPunk and there’s the steampunks. So.

Mirrored from Journal of a Something or Other.