It's Been A Hard Day's Night...

[mountainm]

My latest bit of leather bashing.<br />

[rickdroid]

Beautiful, looks alive. Looks like i should stick a pin through it and place a label under it. Is that based on any specific beetle?

Really impressive piece.

[snubbyfan]

I saw that and thought, "that's a cool looking beetle on that hunk of leather. Oh wait! It's carved in, cool!"

[mountainm]

Thanks. It's a stag beetle. The colour is chromatic. So it changes from a dull bronze to an iridescent purple in the light.

[rosiart]

Very impressive. Like others have mentioned, it looks very real. How big is the beetle? And all the little details on the legs....amazing.

Made me think of some of the older, out of this world ball gowns that had beetle wings as the iridescent embellishment on the bodice and got me to wondering if a person could achieve a similar effect with leather tooled and painted. Was it a specific brand of paint you used?

Thanks for sharing with us.

[mountainm]

It's duochrome nail polish. Sometimes called chromatic, chameleon or flip metal. The piece it's on is about 6" square.

[MonicaJacobson]

What. That is awesome.

[Toney]

Very nice!

[Bair Hide]

Nail polish...I would never have guessed. Amazing!

[Grey Drakkon]

Awesome, especially getting in all those tiny areas around the legs!

An acrylic paint I've used that does something similar is the Lumiere brand, they have the added bonus of heat-setting, so blasting it with a hair dryer helps really stick it down.

[mountainm]

Hadn't seen those before. The halo range looks just the job. Thanks.