'Time Bomb" is Finished

It's pretty disturbing to spend hours on a project, feeling pretty satisfied with the incremental development, only to take a final look at the culmination and think ------ hmmm, I wish I had done blah, blah, blah. : /

Specifically, I wish I had randomly scattered several number tiles around the ball instead of in a clock face arrangement. That way I would not have had a front or back. IF I had not had a front or back, THEN I could have glued all sorts of miscellaneous clock parts from the seven junkers I bought at a second hand shop for this reason without it looking out of place. Oh well. So I had to work with what was already 'set in stone' so to speak. : )



I wanted this piece to look like a bomb not a clock so I refrained from just gluing clock hands on the front center, which would have easily snagged and broken off with handling. What you see is an alarm clock I mostly dismantled and sliced in half so I could achieve the relative appearance of a bomb timing mechanism. I didn't choose a digital one because it wouldn't be lit up - therefore no numbers would have appeared. woe is me. : (

My closing comment on show piece #5 --- this took far longer to make but was easier than I thought it would be. I had fun playing with a new medium and learned along the way, so I'm glad I tackled it. I can guarantee I will NOT be taking consignment orders to make another like this. Ha! But since I bought eight bowling balls to mosaic, I have seven more creations to experiment with. You'll see them on this blog but NOT anytime soon.

As far as my show status is concerned, I hope to complete #7 next week and post it by Friday. Here is #6 which I finished early last week while grout was curing on the ball. It is called Have You Time? The beginnings of this flower originated from a Marcy Tilton class experiment in surface design in May 2008. My unsuccessful screen printed stencil on fusible web was painted over with a macro fantasy flower. I heavily thread embroidered the petals with my sewing machine. The poem was ink jet printed on a Jacquard Silk printer sheet, cut to size with a wavy rotary blade and then given a light watercolor wash of green to blend with the flower details. Any sort of border treatment was counterproductive to the macro simplicity and its small 7 x 9 inch size.