Little Blue Crab

I've been working on getting some production pieces made in the last month or two, and it's been a pretty crazy process, with a few setbacks.

For example, I recently hit on the (seemingly) brilliant idea of making molds of a chasing or two out of two part molding compound (excellent stuff, by the way) and then pressing metal clay into them.  This, unfortunately, did not work as planned, because the firing went terribly wrong somewhere along the line.  I did not, in fact, set everything on fire, which I think I just made it sound like.  I did, though, end up with little molten lumps of metal instead of the rather nicely detailed pieces I was expecting.  It was a sad state of affairs, and I spent the rest of that evening wallowing in self pity.  (Pretty sure that is the appropriate response!)  I may revisit the process again, but I'm not getting my hopes too high this time around.

So I've returned to my original plan, which was to create a finished piece in copper, and then have a mold made of it, from which I'll have multiples cast.  By a company who does them properly, because I've begun to realize I'm not meant to cast things myself, I think.  Things are progressing apace, and I've finished the front of a very promising little blue crab.  (He would be a blue crab if he had any color to him, I mean, and wasn't made of copper!)