Art Glitter is like Ketchup- it Goes on Anything!

Today is the first day of my three months as one of Art Glitter's Guest Designers.  You can follow the link at the left under "other web venues" to see my page there.

To mark the beginning of this exciting adventure, I thought I'd post this little guy who is just beginning his big adventure in life as he hatches from his egg.

I worked on him off and on over several months.  The first step was to make the egg.  I was experimenting with making polymer clay "geodes" by layering clay over a crumpled aluminum foil core.  I pressed the clay into the crumpled foil quite firmly, scored the cut where I would later separate the geode into halves, baked the piece, cut it, then carefully removed the foil with tweezers.  I liked the geode, but didn't know what to do with it.

Then, months later, I looked at it in a different way - as an egg rather than a geode - and it seemed to obviously be a dragon egg.  So I made the dragon from polymer clay, echoing the colors in the geode egg.  I made Fantasy Film wings (Fantasy Film is an Art Glitter product) embellished with microfine Art Glitter and Swarovski crystals, and attached them in a pose that's supposed to look like he's drying them in the sun after hatching.

I added more glitter on the dragon itself.  My favorite part is his claws which are heavily coated with Art Glitter's Ruby Red Microfine Opaque glitter.  They look like ruby claws!

Although I glued the dragon and two halves of the geode egg together with strong two-part epoxy glue, it needed a base to stabilize the piece.  Then I remembered the smallish oak slices that I salvaged from tree trimming.  They had been sitting inside for nearly a year so I figured they had dried and shrunk all they were going to.   But just to make sure, I sealed them with several coats of Diamond Glaze.  Then.........more glitter!

His name is Rupert, and he sits proudly on the dresser.  I've placed a few of my vintage marcasite jewelry pieces in the egg, and he is happily and competently guarding them.

Now that I am an Art Glitter Guest Designer, the law requires me to disclose my relationship with them, which is that I am designing six projects that they will post on their website and in return they are providing me with some of their product.  I have used their products since I became acquainted with them about four years ago and have written about them in several previous blog posts - even before I became an official guest designer!  So if you're inclined to give them a try, I highly recommend them.