Celebrating Snow Globes – on Display

It’s a big honor to have our snow globes displayed in a museum!

Five unique snow globes created by Camryn Forrest Designs are on display for the rest of November and all of December as part of the “Celebrating Snow Globes” exhibit at the Sandwich Glass Museum in Sandwich, Mass. This is about an hour’s drive from Boston, or an hour’s drive from Providence. If you go there, you’ll see an entire collection of snow globes, both antique and modern.

Here’s what is on display from Camryn Forrest Designs:

Airship Voyager, Uncharted Skies, Sacramento Steampunk Society snow globe (courtesy Collection of Doug Hack), Ray Gun One, and Circular Logic snow globes.

And bonus: the Airship Voyager snow globe is the  featured globe on the front of the Sandwich Glass Museum December brochure. So cool!

Not a Level Playing Field – football meets Escher waterglobe

Not a Level Playing Field snow globe, Camryn Forrest Designs, Denver, Colorado

Ever heard the saying “it’s not a level playing field?”  I’m a football fan — don’t laugh, I swear it! And in recent years, the teams I’ve been following struggled. More than a little.

There’s not a lot of ways to put this nicely, but sometimes it just looks like we aren’t on the same page, or in the same book, or even in the same library. And boom goes the dynamite! What captures this season for me is how everyone is doing their job, doing what they should do and still … still … apparently not able to play the game as a team, as a unit. The quarterback throws on one plane, the wide receiver runs on another, linemen are upside down and sideways. Yep, looks familiar.

Why is it that some teams take a deep breath and think and act as a single entity, and others, full of heart and life and talent, can’t seem to find their way? Heck, if I knew that, I’d be coaching. For real.

I figure mixing M.C. Escher’s warped staircases and American football in a snow globe makes just about as much sense as our season.

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All images and designs copyright (c) Camryn Forrest Designs, Denver, Colorado.

The Bomb (Hide in Plain Sight) snow globe

The Bomb snow globe

This snow globe is da bomb.

When I’m digging through a bin of costume jewelry at a thrift shop or yard sale, I don’t expect to find a tiny bomb among the rubble of rhinestones, silvertone seagulls and tarnished beads. But just like in real life, you never really know what’s around the corner, or lurking under those authentic “made in China” pukka shells. We don’t suspect a “bombshell” before it’s dropped in casual conversation. We don’t expect to go from digging for diamonds to dealing with destruction in a flash.

So this bomb is front and center in a snow globe, touched with a shimmer of dark dust, and surrounded by what may be harmless shapes: towers and cones and flying saucers, planets and satellites. The shape of the bomb is seductive, its pose is alert but inert. For now.

Do you prefer danger to be out of sight and out of mind, or to be hidden in plain view?

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Scavenger Hunt Airship – the dark “Snow” Globe

ImaginScavenger Hunt snow globeing details in a past that never was, great airships travel the skies, seeking adventure and fortune. But what do they leave in their wake?

As the moon will attest, explorers may leave a few items behind, the flotsam and jetsam, the tossed cargo, the unnecessary items shed in the rush to embark. This waterball (snow globe) is a snapshot of a mysterious scavenger airship carrying cargo wrapped tightly with chains. Recycle, re-purpose, re-use the refuse.

The patched and battered zeppelin floats slowly, thoughtfully, perhaps hovering while deciding whether to scavenge lost parts and useable items from the surface below. When the glass globe is shaken, the liquid is filled with a cloud of dark, smoky gray metallic powder, reminiscent of the heavy air in an industrial city. It’s hardly fair to call it a snow globe, when the world is full of sparkling mystery and dark opportunity.

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The waterball base is wrapped in space junk: gears and parts of machines, wheels and chains. Hand-engraved plate reads “Scavenger Hunt.”

Skating the Issue – custom snow globe

Skating the Issue custom snow globeSkating the Issue custom snow globeA tiny Ferris wheel contraption with four antique brass roller skates instead of seating is enclosed in a glass globe with shimmering liquid, for those who like endlessly “skating the issue,” steampunk-style. It may have wheels, but this curious invention is going nowhere on purpose.

Now I know that “skirting the issue” reminds me of when someone wraps around a banquet table, ostensibly to cover up anything the guests don’t need to see, a place to tuck your problems, wires, empty dishes, etc. behind the curtain.

But what is “skating the issue?” I imagine it’s when the issue is like a spot of cracked, thin ice, and one skates around it, but tries ever so hard to avoid it. That of course, would involve ice skates, and these are old-fashioned four-wheeled roller skates, so the analogy doesn’t work at all. This waterglobe (or snow globe or waterball, if you must) does exactly what it is supposed to do.

Skirting, skating. You choose.

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Airship Voyager Water Globe

Voyager Airship Snow Globe

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The funny thing about this snow globe is … I was trying to remake a particular favorite globe. It didn’t seem like such a big request, after all, I’d done it once before.

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So here is the globe I MEANT to re-make:

Airship Snow Globe

… and here is the globe I made instead. (I admit it: Not even close.)

On the other hand, sometimes the sequel IS better than the original. The biggest and most interesting difference (to me) is the attempt to weather the ship to show it had been places, seen things, survived adventures and come home to tell the tale. Paint and stain was used to indicate wear and tear, repairs and how the elements might affect an old airship through the years.

The original sculpture is tiny, as evidenced here before it was inserted into the glass globe and liquid. Yes, just over 2 inches.

Voyager Airship insert sculpture

When shaken, the snowglobe fills with glittering swirls of metallic (mainly gold) dust, which shimmers and floats very slowly to the base, creating an illusion of perhaps sailing in the clouds near sunset, or a world with industrial smoke and residue.

Detail of the waterglobe (snowglobe), showing the propellers on the nose of ship, followed by the tail view, as the ship sails off to a new adventure.