Barnacles! Work in Progress!

So many barnacles.  I love them so.  This is a sneak peek at the piece I've been working on.  Well, some of the unassembled components anyway.

This is about a million times life size.  The actual barnacles pictured range from 3mm to 5mm.  They'll be oxidized and then polished a bit, and there'll be more.  I've got seven barnacle clusters finished, and more in the works.  Some of the others are a bit larger, and I'm working towards more variation in the size of the barnacles within the clusters.  We'll see how it looks.  Right now I'm thinking that some of the largest barnacles will go into another piece, and that these will go onto the necklaces.  I might try out some gradation in the sizes throughout the necklace.  I'll make a lot of the final decisions as I assemble it, so it's up in the air until then.

I'm also working on taking pictures for a tutorial on chasing!  I'm not sure when I'll finish taking the photos and getting it written up, but it should be pretty neat when I've finished.  (In the photo to the right, I'm burning off pitch, which is turning the flame orange.)  I'm actually demonstrating one of my barnacles, since I'm chasing it anyway and it's a fairly simple form.  This particular barnacles is a much larger one than those above, about 9mm, I think.  It'll be a pretty extensive tutorial, so I'll probably post an early section on here and then put it up as a very inexpensive .pdf on Etsy.  It'll definitely have a whole section on making your own chasing tools as well, so if you've got no experience chasing, it'd probably be worth your while to check it out.