Tag Archives: DIY

My removable holographic vinyl and crystal decorative face shield tiara!

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Removable holographic vinyl and crystal decorative face shield crown by Suzanne Forbes 2I made this quite early in lockdown, probably April, and have been using it all year!

It’s made out of holographic vinyl, cut into decorative shapes and glued together, with crystals and snakeskin pvc and jellie rhinestones.

Removable holographic vinyl and crystal decorative face shield crown by Suzanne Forbes 2I used glitter glue gun to stick parts of it together!

I am wearing a face mask made by Beloved Friend-Muse-Patron Shakrah Yves!

Removable holographic vinyl and crystal decorative face shield crown by Suzanne Forbes 2The holo vinyl tiara is flexible, and wraps around the plastic face shield brow piece.

I cut holes that line up with the studs on the brow piece and fastened it onto the studs.

Removable holographic vinyl and crystal decorative face shield crown by Suzanne Forbes 2Then the clear plastic face shield just pops over the same studs!

The face shield portion can be easily switched if it needs to be replaced, and of course the tiara part can be easily switched to a different brow piece, as long as it has the same array of studs. If I were making another, I would definitely make a vinyl base and fit it to the brow piece, test the face shield, then decorate it, as this one wrinkles a little under the face shield.

Removable holographic vinyl and crystal decorative face shield crown by Suzanne Forbes 2I was gonna wear it for a remote photoshoot with a local photographer, to help normalize wearing face shields and face coverings.

But I decided to give them money to do shoots with BIPOC folx instead. So this project was in un-shared limbo, and now I’m documenting it and sharing 🙂

I do really love the idea of custom snazzy faceshields, and want to see more! Gieza Poke did marvelous customizations with face shields during the fall IRL return of the Poke House to Monster Ronsons, you can see one here. Fashion face shields for all!

 

West Berlin mantis party redux, five years later!

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UV resin and 3d printer pen mantis by Suzanne Forbes sept 30 2020My UV resin experiments just continue to get wilder.

I made this mantis using a green floral wire armature, then layers of green and yellow filament from my 3D printer pen.

3d printer pen and UV resin Mantis Work in Progress by Suzanne ForbesThe 3D printer pen filament helped to bulk out and define the structure, while still letting light through.

I like using the pen because it is fast and dirty construction, which suits my essential nature. I also used a piece of pretty green metallic foil I had saved from a package or something to fill out the mantis’s butt.

3d printer pen and UV resin Mantis Work in Progress by Suzanne Forbes 2Then I started wiring thousands of green glass beads all over it.

I strung the beads, crystals and pearls on fine gauge colored craft wire that I looped in and out of the wire armature.

3d printer pen and UV resin Mantis Work in Progress by Suzanne Forbes About halfway into the beading I started stabilizing the bead strands with blobs of green-tinted UV resin!

This was during the very intense August heat wave in Berlin, so I was hanging out in the library with my husband in the air-conditioning. I used both the sunlight coming in the window and my high-powered nail artist’s uv lamp to cure the resin.

3d printer pen and UV resin Mantis Work in Progress by Suzanne Forbes I needed more sunlight to make the drips, though!

Because UV resin cures almost instantly in sunlight, I could sit out on our balcony dripping and dropping blobs of resin all over the armature, creating transparent structure and threads of color. It was very hot, but I figure it was good to get the vitamin D in.

UV resin and 3d printer pen mantis by Suzanne Forbes sept 30 2020I made the wings using florists wire and some green glitter tulle I got five years ago.

The first summer we were here, I had very limited art materials. I had a sketchbook, pencils and pens, and the embroidery materials and fabric that Beloved Friend-Muse-Patron Eva Galperin bought me at the craft store at the mall at Stadtmitte.

UV resin and 3d printer pen mantis and alien venus flytrap by Suzanne Forbes sept 30 2020Of course, I keep every scrap of everything.

(See making of the Giant Alien Venus Flytrap, seen above, here!) So I had green tulle left over from when I made the jewelled mantis that summer of 2015, and I used it to cover the floral wire wing shapes, attaching it with UV resin.

UV resin and 3d printer pen mantis by Suzanne Forbes face sept 30 2020I attached the wings and antenna with UV resin, because it is an amazing adhesive.

It is faster than superglue/CA in direct sunlight, and you can use an instantly hardening bolus of it as a base to hold something steady. In the mantis post from 2015 I talk a lot about my lifelong obsession with transparent mediums, and my frustration with the ones available. Which is funny because I have now found a transparent material I really love working with at last!

UV resin and 3d printer pen mantis by Suzanne Forbes 1 sept 30 2020Finishing this mantis on the balcony today, I could really feel the difference in the sun.

Autumn is here and Winter is coming,

So the resin drip art will be ending til next year. We don’t get enough sunlight to make Vitamin D or cure UV resin in the winters here! That’s ok, I have plenty of other weird insect art projects in the pipeline 🙂

The other articulated mantis sculpture is here.