Making of the alchemists's cabinet

The bottles will be placed in a specially made cabinet, for which I chose to use papier maché, as it is light but very sturdy.
I learned a lot from my previous experiment to make a small bookcase from papier maché. I had the idea to reinforce the edge of the shelves with plastic u-shaped edges (from the DIY shop), and it worked great: the cardboard did not move, and the shelf edges remained straight during the whole building process and afterwards. However, I had not equiped the sides of the cardboard box (the vertical edges) in the same way, so when they got wet (a natural part of the process of putting papier maché on something), they got all wavy. This thime, I put plastic edges on every single edge (see picture left), and painted the carboard with acrylic prior to covering with paper strips to limit the water uptake.
The upper picture shows the almost complete cardboard base, with the edge reinforcements (glued with wood glue and masking tape). The only missing part is the top, which is a single flat cardboard piece cut to shape. I filled the corners with paper paste for strength.
The right side picture shows the cabinet covered with paper strips (the Canard Enchainé gives high quality, water resilient strips, as you can see).
I managed to get a satifactory finish for the paint, but it is still rather fragile. I am looking now for something watertight and resilient (and not too expensive) to finish it...

Anneau-Monde / Ringworld

An almost all image tutorial for the all polymer clay ringworld bracelet I made for the Perles & co contest with the theme "Visions of the future". A megastructure also known as Dyson ring (albeit it can be argued that this does not quite correspond to Freeman Dyson's idea), Coronal (if your source is Karl Schroeder), Orbital (if you are more Iain M. Banks inclined), or Halo megastructure. The technique is scalable (although I wouldn't relish the prospect of making it smaller). There are way more baking and polishing steps than indicated (between each major step, actually).
If you have questions...

Un tutoriel presque tout en images pour le bracelet anneau-monde (ou anneau de Dyson, ou Coronal , Orbital, ou Halo selon la mégastructure que vous préférez) en polymère (Fimo et Kato) que j'ai créé pour le concours "Visions du Futur" du site Perles and co.
Il y a bien plus d'étapes de cuisson et de polissage qu'indiqué (entre chaque étape majeure, en fait). N'hésitez pas si vous avez des questions (mais la réponse ne sera peut être pas immédiate).If you like it, you can help me fund my numerous DIY addictions by voting for it until the 31st of March on the contest website, in the "amateur" category.
Vous pouvez manifester votre (éventuelle) appréciation en votant pour le projet jusqu'au 31 mars sur le site du concours, catégorie amateur.
Cela pourra peut être m'aider à ne pas dépenser tout l'argent du ménage en fournitures...

Polymer clay specimen bottles 1

I have recently started playing again with polymer clay, and while experimenting with transfers, I started wondering what to do with the transfered picture.
My experimenting pictures were a tad gruesome, especially after I became aware of the Images of the History of Medicine and the Historical Anatomies from the National Library of Medicine (hat tip to Neurophilosophy), so placing them on specimen bottles was the logical next step.
The following tutorial does not present much really new, and I will quote the relevant sources but on the off chance it can be of use to someone, here it is.
I used baking parchment paper/laser printer for the transfer (V. Aharoni, via Glass Attic). I had singled out this method because I did not want to get frustrated with failed transfer, and I wanted to be able to get good transfers from very finely detailed pictures like the old anatomical drawings. It turned out to be a good choice. The printing step is actually the sensitive one, but the transfer itself only failed once (and I had it coming, the way I treated it).
Here is a tutorial/description of the transfer steps with a few tips, using a mix of white/champagne Fimo classic.
I made an antiquing trial using acrylic paint, but the result was disappointing, probably because the surface is flat and does not catch paint much. Oil paint antiquing, on the other hand, gives a great finish in this case. I didn't try on other brands of clays or with color laserjet prints, but I suppose it would work (see V. Aharoni's tests).
The bottles still need caps and ageing to look good...