Friday Five: Thread and Dragon Version

It's that time o' the week again.  That's right!  It's Friday!  So here are five pics of what I've been up to lately.  Well, I suppose it's a bit cheatery since there's basically one standalone pic and then a series of four related ones, but oh well.

1. Our local craft store is closing, much to my angst, because the next nearest craft stores are inconveniently far away.  As Ma Ingalls would say, though, there's no great loss without some small gain, which in this case is $120 worth of thread obtained for $30 due to clearance sales.

A rainbow of embroidery/decorative threads and metallics.

2. I have a classmate whom I have dubbed Whiny Classmate.  (She knows this and knows how lovingly I call her this to others and that there's nothing she can do about it.  HAH.)  One day she was attempting to explain to me how my flat dragon pendant idea would be much cooler with a 3-D head and I didn't exactly understand what she meant, so she scribbled out this 3-second example sketch:

Whiny Classmate insisted it's a dragon.

3.  I declared her sketch way more interesting than my original idea and decided to bring it to life in metal, as such a doofy-looking awesome dragon deserved.

WIP: Bits sawed out and domed, ready for soldering.

4. After a couple of weeks or so, here he is!  He turned out to be a brooch rather than a pendant.  The head and wings are bronze (and the wings are textured with a scaly pattern), the arms are brass wire, the body and tail are copper, and the wings and tail are riveted with silver rivets so that they can move around.  There's also a dichroic glass stone set inside his mouth.

ROOOOOOARARGARGHARGHARGH!

5. A back view.  "WHEEEEEE" is stamped on the back of his tail, and there's a bronze rat soldered to the back because I like rats and this is my pendant so I can do what I want, so there!  For added interest, I speckled the back with bits of silver solder and gave the copper a darker patina for contrast.

Wheeeeee!

The dragon was supposed to be carrying a stonesetting as an egg, and I actually made one so that it could be a removable pendant worn separately, but it looked weird when looped onto his hands so I ended up leaving it off.

I quite enjoyed making this dragon as much of his inherent charm is due to the fact that under normal circumstances the originally sketch would've been tossed in the trash without a second thought.  Whiny Classmate doodled it on the butcher paper that covered the desk, and when cleanup time came, I took scissors and cut that sucker out to save it for posterity.  I mean just look at that face.  Look at it.  How could I not?

And the day's lesson was thus: Creativity comes from all sources.

Also: Alz will do exactly what she wants.

Happy Friday, folks!  Hope you have a great weekend.