Behold, the Zodascope!

[alias_sqbr]

Right! Finally, I have finished this damn modded steampunk lamp for Wastelands. It ATE MY BRAIN for several days, and I've been working on it off and on for ages (though pretty much everything I did before Friday ended up being thrown away or undone :/ )



I was pondering what to do for Wastelands and Cam suggested I mod this old reading lamp. Since it has a superficial similarity to a pocket watch/compass etc I decided to turn it into an aleithiometer. I painted it gold (it was originally silver and black) and spent ages messing around with this image (getting rod of the hands, lining it up with the inner and outer rings of the lamp etc). I thought about using some of the style of the chameleon arch, if you look closely at the first image you can see the remains of a design I did in permanent marker (it looked crap)

I experimented with making fimo gears and was pondering some sort of two layer decoupage when on Friday I suddenly decided this was an absurd amount of effort to go to on a stolen image when I could make something nice using real 19th century stuff in the public domain.



After MUCH searching through lots of square images I found some round ones:
http://www.fromoldbooks.org/Sibly-Astrology/pages/0893-Nativity-of-Christ-detail-chart/0893-Nativity-of-Christ-detail-chart-q75-500x499.jpg
http://www.fromoldbooks.org/Sibly-Astrology/pages/astrology-p106-circlepsp/astrology-p106-circlepsp-497x520.jpg
http://www.fromoldbooks.org/Rossetti-Dante-LaVitaNuova/pages/116-zodiac-wheel/116-zodiac-wheel-q75-318x500.jpg
http://www.oldbookillustrations.com/pages/time-zone-watch.php?lng=en
http://karenswhimsy.com/astrology-signs.shtm

and cobbled them into an image. Which I then printed, and realised looked dumb inside the lamp, so I fiddled with it some more, and then decided that looked dumb...and I did this for pretty much a day straight, and then off and on until late this afternoon when I decided it was time to settle for what I had. On the plus side being obsessively hunched over the computer stopped me wandering around the house like I normally do! And it was fun :)



After some searching online I found two likely looking tutorials:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Steampunk-Pirate-Gun-Mod/ (for the black sections)
http://www.instructables.com/id/Radiation-Kid-Gun-Build/ (for the silver sections)

Only of course as much as possible I used what I had around the house, which was not always a good thing.

So, first I had to remove all the (crappy looking) gold paint I'd put on :(

I then sandpapered the whole thing (including, lightly, the glass bits) with medium grain sandpaper, and coated it with modge podge sealer/glue. I then rubbed black paint over the silver sections and wiped it off, only to find that the sealer had covered up all the nice scratches (compared to my first experiment) So I sandpapered it bit more and painted it again and it looked ok. I also painted black over any remaining gold paint and coated it all in spray varnish since acrylic paint comes off pretty easy.



Then I got to play with rub'n'buff ("antique gold") on the black sections. That stuff is awesome fun, but quite tricky to use. I recommend starting on a bit you don't care about, because it's natural tendency is to leave small spots of solid colour rather than the thin smooth coating you want. You ant the teeniest of bits on your finger (like 1mm square), smoothed out, rubbed onto the sticky-out bits and avoiding all the crevices and cracks. The modge-podge worked really well here, all the lumpy bumps gave a nice texture. Not sure how it would have looked with just sandpapering.

At this point the two sections (darkened silver and gilded black) didn't really match so I got a small brush and added extra shadows to the silver section. Then I varnished it all again.

I printed out my "final" image, cut it out and roughed it up a bit (scrunching it into a ball etc) and stuck it on. I then got the hands of a largeish cheap clock and cut them smaller(*), then stuck them together with fimo and onto the "clock"face with araldyte. Then one more varnish and I wa sdone!

The end.




(*)All the small cheap clocks I could find had ugly hands

Comments

[baby-elvis.livejournal.com]

this is fabulous - and it has its own voice, rather than just mindless replication of a set of standard images, which is driving me bonkers about steampunk art.

[alias_sqbr]

Wow, thanks! Yes, I didn't want just another plastic gun with a few random gears stuck on it :/ One of my next fanart prompts is Pride and Predjudice steampunk, which has gotten me thinking about how to translate the genre to the regency era, and thus what steampunk really means. Lots of fun :)

[lisaspieces.livejournal.com]

Keep us informed on this, please. That's my favorite book.

I also run the "pridenprejudice" community if you want to post this over there.

[alias_sqbr]

It will take me a while, I've got another ahead of it and work pretty slowly. I will try and remember to post it to pridenprejudice but if I forget it's sure to show up on my fanart tag (And there should only be one or two posts on that tag before it, unlike my lj!)

[greteldragon.livejournal.com]

Wow. That looks pretty awesome.

[alias_sqbr]

Thanks!

[fallimar.livejournal.com]

Very sweet! I love the parchment look to the inside face, very oldy worldy and cool :)

If you ever want some gears or watch/clock innards for projects like this, just ask me - I've got a massive stash of them that I make jewellery out of, pendants are awesome fun :)

[alias_sqbr]

Huzzah for photoshop filters :D

Oh wow, thanks! I think I will experiment with my plastic gears first though.

[velithya]

I really like the worn look you have going for it :3

[alias_sqbr]

Me too! It's amazing how simple it was to do, too.

[tevriel.livejournal.com]

That looks EXCELLENT.

[alias_sqbr]

Thankyou!

very creative

[w-allmyheartart.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what steampunk is yet, just heard it the other day. This is an interesting piece. What did you use for the final varnish?

I'm having trouble finding a varnish with low or no VOCs that doesn't remain tacky.

Re: very creative

[alias_sqbr]

Thankyou! Steampunk seems to have recently become very big in local fandom/amongst my friends so I've been hearing about it a lot. Have a look at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk

I used the varnish I got for 50% off on sale once, and it does remain tacky :(

Re: very creative

[w-allmyheartart.livejournal.com]

thanks for the link. Reminds me of Jules Verne!

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

That is really quite lovely.

[alias_sqbr]

Thankyou! :)

[donsimpson.livejournal.com]

This is a lovely thing. I really like your research; the resulting dial looks wonderfully authentic as a result.

Re: very creative

[alias_sqbr]

Thankyou!