I had off work today... so I worked at home

Remember this? Project "Give Me Speed" no has a nice, steel hanging bar on the back, and it was also dropped off today for powder coat. The Next time you see this, it will look completely different...

I also made a nice helmet badge from brass today for a half helmet. The brass acts a little different than the copper, it'll definitely take some practice to get totally used to the different metals.

Another thing I've been wanting to do for a long time is try to work leather into a 3-dimensional thing. I saw an old B&W photograph online (Jockey Journal??) of two boardtrackers or flattrackers with leather face masks on, but the leather was molded to look like a real face, not like a MotoX helmet. Seemed pretty interesting so I tried it....

After I dried the leather and trimmed it, this is what I came up with.....

Not perfect, but I'll take it... The biggest problem is that I had wet the leather before checking which side was inside or out, and I totally did it inside-out. GO ME!! Whatever, this was hard, I wanted to do it, it worked for the purposes I intended, therefore I win. :)

Now, I'm making pizza. Today was well-spent playing hooky from work.

Old Helmet, New Blingy Things

Tonight I got back to the "I need to do something right now" mood, and kept up with trying some more metal etching with copper. I have an old Vega helmet (I don't recommend them, they're awful lids) that I used for a while when I was in my teens. My Dad took it and has been using it for the past few years, until I got him a shiny new replacement :)

While my Dad was still using this helmet though, my sister took it one night and started gold leafing it when he wasn't looking, nothing serious, just practicing stuff she saw us doing. So this helmet has become our "tester" for try cool artsy stuff.

New copper "wing" badges to fit inside the "speed lines" across the chin bar. Managed to figure out a super secret way to attach them without the use of screws (cough cough, double-sided tape cough cough!!) Don't tell anybody how I did it, they might try it and be better at it ;)

Copper "Work" Badge

Made a nice badge today. This is .025" thick copper that has been etched. Three tabs allow for small screws to mount this badge to whatever flat surface you desire. I left the sanding marks pretty pronounced to stay with an industrial/rustic kinda feel. For all the kids my age who haven't seen these things before, that's a "hammer" and "nails", and the letters spell "work". Heh heh heh, I know, I'm a smarty pants :)

Here's the link to the sale page on Etsy