Category Archives: Uncategorized

Happy Thoughts — the power of positive thinking

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What are your happy thoughts? And those of the people around you?
There are some folks who believe that  thoughts and attitude are visible through auras surrounding a person. Healing thoughts, dark thoughts, personal growth, worries … and yes, happy thoughts. What you are thinking and feeling becomes the energy surrounding your very being.

We imagined that your happy thoughts might be different, as ours can be. One moment we might think of travel, then ice cream, then dolphins or sunshine. So we made that idea into a special snow globe. When shaken, tiny individual pieces of confetti swirl past in an instant, representing the fleeting happy thoughts we might enjoy.

 

Here’s an image of some of the single pieces of confetti that are in the globe liquid. You can’t make the butterfly dance past your eyes, any more than you can make one fly into your view in a park. But if you don’t see a butterfly, maybe your happy thought will be a race car, or a pineapple, a birthday cake, musical note, or any number of tiny shapes that makes us smile.

Happy Thoughts confetti detail, Camryn Forrest Designs Denver Colorado USA

“Happy Thoughts” one of a kind snow globe with tiny sculpted clay head, rainbow bead aura, and dozens of individual unique confetti pieces in liquid. When the globe is turned and shaken, random pieces (happy thoughts) dance past in shimmering succession. Images and designs copyright (c) 2016 Camryn Forrest Designs, Denver, Colorado, USA.

Grapes of Raft

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A play on words becomes a play on shapes. Sometimes art starts with an image first, sometimes the words twist around until the physical form takes shape.

Inspired by a trip to Crested Butte, Colorado, this tiny tableau is titled, “Grapes of Raft.”

Like a twisting, rolling, unpredictable river, the rapids in “Grapes of Raft” turned over and over in my mind until I knew there was a snow globe to be made. The rapids were sculpted first in clay, which was used to make a mold for clear resin with a hefty dose of iridescent shavings to catch the light. A tiny metal raft carried green glass grapes, inexplicably holding tinier brass paddles.

One of a kind snow globe (sparkle globe) with shimmering iridescent silver dust and glitter when shaken. Hand-painted acrylic base in shades of pewter, silver and gold, finished with two bunches of brass grapes and an engraved silver plate stating “Grapes of Raft.” The interior sculpture is cast clear resin with added iridescent flecks to increase the reflective properties under liquid, brass raft and green glass grapes holding tiny hammered brass raft paddles.

All designs and images are copyright (c) 2015, 2016 Camryn Forrest Designs, Denver, Colorado USA.  This globe will be presented at the Crested Butte Arts Festival, Crested Butte, Colorado in August, 2016.

Family Reunion – Time Flies

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Many of us have two types of family reunions: the one that exists only in the imagination, where everyone is relaxed and sits around enjoying homemade meals (with nary a dish to be washed, and nobody flitting about the kitchen and missing conversations); and the other type, where folks are coming and going and rushing around and making/breaking plans with lots of “be back soon” and “we should catch up sometime” commentary as the minutes and days whiz by.

Sometimes, despite the desire for the union of the reunion, people just seem to be moving in opposite directions, even living on different planes of reality, as it were. Families are fluid by nature; they don’t sit still for long.

And so, with a nod to the imagination of M.C. Escher, Family Reunion.

 

 

One of a kind snow (sparkle) globe with hand-fabricated staircase and vintage figures scurrying about. When shaken, the liquid-filled globe shimmers with gold dust, only slightly prettier than we imagine the sands of time. Images and design copyright (c) 2016 Camryn Forrest Designs, Denver, Colorado  USA.

A History of American Snow Globes

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Now and then in our travels on the internet, we find interesting documents about snow globes.

Bonus: this document, a Masters thesis, is about the history of snow globes, and includes a paragraph or so about Camryn Forrest Designs. We’re honored to be included.

A BIOGRAPHY OF THE AMERICAN SNOW GLOBE: FROM MEMORY TO MASS PRODUCTION, FROM SOUVENIR TO SIGN, by Anne Hilker

Here’s an excerpt from the thesis:

 “Camryn Forrest, a self-described snow globe “artist,” uses the globe’s original theme of delight and intrigue: working in a genre called “steampunk,” she encases in her globes fantasy objects appearing to be powered by steam and built with ironclad soldered parts.

Doubling back both to nostalgia for an early industrialized, rather than technological, ethos, as well as to the Victorian origins of the globe, the tableaux inside contain machines and figures that have no real – world counterparts, past or present. When the tiny shapes of human figures do appear, their function is to give relative scale to the gigantic machines: they are featureless mannequins, posed in positions that defy gravity …”

 

To read the rest of Hilker’s work, follow the link.

https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/handle/10088/27478/HILKERTHESIS5.23.pdf

“Point of View” an Escher-inspired snow globe, design and images copyright (2012, 2016) Camryn Forrest Designs, Denver, Colorado, USA.

Geodesic Dome/Dome

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It’s an intriguing shape, the geodesic dome. Simply, interlocking straight lines are used to create polygons, those polygons in turn become a curved hemisphere shape, like half of a soccer ball or a jungle gym.

Credit for the geodesic dome in architecture goes to R. Buckminister Fuller: “a light, domelike structure developed by R. Buckminster Fuller to combine the properties of the tetrahedron and the sphere and consisting essentially of a grid of compression or tension members lying upon or parallel to great circles running in three directions in any given area, the typical form being the projection upon a sphere of an icosahedron, the triangular faces of which are filled with a symmetrical triangular, hexagonal, or quadrangular grid.”

Woah, that’s a lot of words for a half an orange. But another meaning of dome is slang for the shape of the human head. Which got us thinking: what if you put a geodesic dome on your dome?

 

One of a kind clay sculpture with metallic finish, brass and aluminum embellishment to create geodesic dome. Snow globe and sculpture images and design are copyright (c) 2016 Camryn Forrest Designs, Denver, Colorado USA.

 

Citation: geodesic dome. (n.d.). Collins English Dictionary – Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition. Retrieved May 16, 2016 from Dictionary.com website

Black Sails

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Have you ever heard the saying, “that ship has sailed?”
I planned to take a series of fabulous photos of our newest airship snow globe when we got back to Colorado after showing at the spring One of a Kind show in Chicago, but …

that ship has sailed. It was purchased and is off on a new adventure, somewhere in Illinois.

Here are a few snaps we took during the making of “Black Sails” that may inspire us to make another someday.

 

“Black Sails” – one of a kind glitter snow globe, with tiny airship over a sailing ship with sails made of black cloth. When shaken the globe glitters with darker glitter, reminiscent of thunder and lightning. Hand-painted base with metallic patina effect and brass rivets. Design and images are copyright (c) 2016 Camryn Forrest Designs, Denver, Colorado, USA.