I am getting ready for August’s Castro Night Market, and have a few fun creatures on my studio table. I don’t think I have ever featured a work in progress before. But the actual making is where the joy lives for me, so I thought I’d share it with you.

I hope I can get them ready in time for next week’s market!

Axolotl

This little guy is the first from a new mold. He’s pink holographic chrome, with transparent ruby frills and feet. The eyes, like all of my creature’s eyes, are vintage swarovski crystals. He’s nearly complete, just needs a final sanding on the base.

Emerald Octopus

I don’t really work in greens very often, so I thought I would try something different. This is the third in my big octopus series, and this time around I would like to add small crystals to some of the suckers. I do this with my smaller jewelry size octopus pieces.

Blue and Orange Betta Fish

These fish are the most intricate creature work that I do. It takes hours to paint the molds. I use a mica powder + isopropyl alcohol solution to get the color into the spines. This is my first try with adding some sparkly scales (I hope it works out!), and I used some copper foil to get the feel of the patchy color you sometimes see in betta fish. I haven’t poured the main body resin yet, but plan to use a deep purple-y blue.

I like to use real betta fish as inspiration. Here’s one of the fish that influenced this piece.