Fallen at the first hurdle (balls of various styles...)

I know, I know, I said I'd post every Friday and the first week (it's now Sunday, sigh) I fail - BUT - I have a valid excuse this week, as I can now reveal a secret I've been (very badly) keeping for a while now, as the show it was for is this weekend!

Here is the model that has had me working through nights, cutting my fingers to pieces, going to work with resin under my fingernails, up my arms and once even in my hair!  This is Snowflake Frodo, a variation on the minified Frodo model I sculpted a year or two ago.

He was commissioned by Shannon Southard for her A Midwinter's Night Ball Live Show which is being held today and tomorrow in Fort Worth, Texas in the US.
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I "met" Shannon over a model horse sale back in early Spring, and we got to discussing the possibilities of my supplying her with a large number of medallions for her to use a prizes at the show.  Originally she asked for 240 but that quickly went up to over 260.  She loved the Frodo medallion and asked if I coud add that pony to a snowflake or something wintry.
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So, in August I thought it was time to get to work on this project and set to work creating a snowflake, I was pleasanty surprised to find that I was able to create a unique snowflake design - actually creating a snowflake with 6 identical points was tricky, involving several rounds of casting and re-casting to get the shape right.  After that I added the Frodo to the front, using a carefully trimmed part-cast of Mini Frodo and an obscene amount of Apoxie-Sculpt!  Shannon approved the design and I got casting, she wanted mainly wintry colours but I did stray a little from the brief and cast a few warmer colours, some of which Shannon liked and added to the models going to Texas and some of which I kept (to become a SR next winter).  Here is a Sky Blue copy, still a little untidy (each copy had to be trimmed with a scalpel to get those edges crisp; a job that took as long as the casting process for each, and resulted in several cut fingers!) but you get the general idea.

Here is another copy, this time a black model with a red interference colour added - I had an absolute ball (no pun intended) casting all the different colours!

I didn't think I'd taken any photos of the whole lot of them, but I came across this pic today taken just before I packed tem all up:

This photo shows the 272 (I think, give or take a couple) of models that were sent to Shannon.  It's rotated on my screen (should be landscape, not portrait) but the models along the bottom (or left, viewing it portrait) are split finish copies.  I didn't get nice clear pics like those above of all the models, but here's a less-than-glamorous photo of one of the split finish copies, which were to be for the higher-placing winners.

Interestingly, a by-product of casting all these fabulous colours is this:

This is a ball sat on a mold.  Slightly random...
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I had a stone ball lying about, one of those decorative things, I've had them for years, I just like how they feel in your hand.  Anyway, whilst making one of the 20 (yipes!) or so molds for the snowflakes (the snowflake proved quite harsh on the molds), I had some rubber left over and I really hate waste, so was dashing around trying to find something to make a mold of before it cured and was wasted, and found the stone ball.  I had a little circular plastic clip (not sure where that was from) which kept the ball stable and still in the mould-casing (mold/mould, it's a US/UK thing, I tend to waver between the two modes), so I whacked in the rubber and hey presto!  A mold to play with!  I found that I consistently mixed a little over the amount required for each Snowflake Frodo (much better to mix too much than too little and need to top up the mix), so each time this happened I first cast the Lego (trademark) brick (something that helps me re-create a model previously cast and sold, I write the "recipe" on the brick and this works a treat), which I do with every new colour, and then I put the remaining resin into the ball mould.  This created, during the creation of the 270+ copies (actually 350+ as I received a dodgy batch of rein and it took a while before I got confirmation of this, sigh!) over 30 "Random Balls", which is how they've now been christened.
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If you'd like a random ball, get in touch, they didn't cost much in materials considering they're a by-product, but I really like them, in fact, I keep a few at work and randomly change them, just to see if anyone notices, hehe!
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Ok, moving on!  I revisited the mold for the Little Ones this week.  I was in the mood to experiment with resin pigments and needed to play with a mold, and chose the Little One mold.  I had a bit of resin that needed using up (it comes in large gallon containers, so if there'sonly a few hundred ml left, it won't last too long in such large bottles so is best used up).  The models came out in an array of fun colours, all of which I think are nice baby colours, and to my surprise they are good enough castings, tha, with a bit of cleaning up, will be the same quality as the ones I cast last August!  I don't want to just list them for sale, so will be running a bit of a fun sale on them.  I will randomly (random is my favourite word, which is good fun but a pain for anyone relying on me! Hehe!) post a blog over the next few weeks, and the first person to email me will get the model.  This is based on the model still being popular of course, so if they don't sell they'll eventually go on MH$P, but I like the idea of a little fun blog-sale, so will go this way for now.

The blue/purple one will be sold last, the white ones are already sold, and one blue copy is a gift for a friend, but watch this space, as if you missed out on the original issue for Little One, these colourful copies will be made available soon (they are almost raw in the pic, so a little untidy).