Kaleidoscopes

River Dwellers Kaleidoscope

This scope design was inspired by Georgia on the KBKB Yahoo forum - she covers the mirrors directly with polymerclay to secure them. That's what I did for the initial layer and then I did my final sculpted layer.

The wheel for this scope is also almost entirely polymer clay. I used pearlex powders, jones tones foils, patterned and sculpted clay. I also added a couple pearls and gemstone chips as accents.

Cliff Dwellers Kaleidoscope

This was inspired by ancient cliff dwellings. The body was covered with faux sandstone, textured, sculpted and antiqued. This is a two mirror, 7 point kaleidoscope with magnifying lens. The object chamber contains various beads and glass pieces, including some dichroic glass. The entire chamber turns.

Sweet Rose Pendant Kaleidoscope

This is my second pendant scope with a rather different style. The object is a glass bead by Zen Art Glass which can be rotated on the wire axle. The neat thing about this scope is that the bead is interchangeable - you can remove one of the axle ends and slide on any other bead you like.

One side has an image from a J W Waterhouse painting titled "My Sweet Rose". Three dimensional roses adorn the other side to follow the theme.

Ancient Bronze Pendant Scope

This is the first wearable scope I've made. It's a two mirror (60 degree angle) scope. The mirrors are quite small, 1cm by 4cm. I used one of the mini lenses from polymerclayprojects.com - the focal length (at least for my eyes) was between 2 and 4.5 cm.

I kept the shape of the scope pretty basic for this first prototype. The swallow and orchid were created from molds of my own orignal sculpted designs. Once it was baked, I gave it a faux bronze look with acrylic paint.

I couldn't get the camera close enough to get all of the image but you can see most of it. There is no separate object chamber - the tiny beads actually move within the mirrors. This gives a great 3d effect since the image can move closer to you if you tilt the scope upwards. The only problem is that it's a bit dark without a strong light source - I'll need to add less objects or a side light if I use this design again.

Dragon's Eye Scope

This is the first mini scope I've made that I've cut my own mirrors. I was using a surplus lens that I bought from American Science & Surplus, which accounts for the unusual dimensions. The lens was quite large bur had a very short focal length. There are a number of things I could improve but I learned alot and am happy with it over all.

I sculpted and molded the dragon's eye. I liked the idea of a dragon's eye view and may do others with the same theme. The scope was made with white clay and tinted with alchol based inks.

I couldn't get the camera close enough to get much of the image, but it's a three mirror scope with small sead beads and bugle beads for the objects.

Irridescent Leaves Kaleidoscope

This is a scope that I made as a demo at the Klay Karma 2005 retreat in Massachusetts. (A great time, btw!)

This kaleidoscope was made from the Single Tube kit. The barrel was covered with a modified version of Mike Buessler's leaf resist technique. I covered the scope with black clay, then placed real leaves back side down (so the vein pattern would be pressed in) and brayered them in. I used gold, copper and bronze mica powders to cover the clay around the leaves. Then I carefully peeled up the leaves and used blue and green powders to cover the exposed leaf spaces. I also used a bit of sandpaper here and there to add additional texture. Once it was baked, I glazed it with Future, let it dry, and assembled the scope.

Manatee Scope

This is a two mirror 7 point kaleidoscope. I wanted to create the illusion of light filtering down into the ocean depths. A sea turtle and seahorse can be seen on the far side of the scope.

The object cell is a dry cell but turns in its cradle. The polymer clay end caps fit well enough that I didn't need to glue them - they can be removed and the objects can be changed. The current image is formed from dichroic glass, shattered irridescent mosaic marbles, and varied glass beads. On this scope I lapped and chamfered the first surface mirrors.