These magnets contain some of my niftier findings.  I took apart a watch to get the gears in the upper right. They aren’t as fun as all-metal gears, but plastic watch gears aren’t radioactive, unlike some of the radium dusted (it glows! In the dark!) ones from last century.  I like the transistors too, and the mirror tile.  I’ve been saving dead watch parts, so every collection of magnets I do might have a watch band buckle.

Here’s the second set of magnets I made for the Clarion Foundation’s Write-a-thon this year. Some lucky person will get these.  Keys donated by Kim Stanley Robinson.  I hope they’re going to a good fridge.

I experimented with different things to set in the resin, and some were more successful than others.  The gold leaf didn’t have that lovely suspended quality I had hoped for.  The small metal button in the bottom one is nice, though the glare of the light (which was even filtered!) makes it hard to see. I don’t like the clear glass bead as much, but the pearls and filigreed heart are great.

So here’s the cover art I decided on for my novel, SEEING THINGS.  I had thought about using a teacup for a motif anyway, and the idea came to me that it would be cool if the title of the book were written in tea leaves. (A tea leaf reading impacts the plot of the novel.)  So I went to a coffee shop I frequent and asked for “a large black tea, hold the water.” Then I brewed it and drank the tea.  Using a palette knife, I arranged the leaves until they read the title. I did some other shots with my hand, and some with different lighting too. I tried to make a second shot with the leaves forming a shape (a skull is all I could think of) but it didn’t look as cool.

On one hand, this isn’t as good a cover as the one with our model, because urban fantasy novels almost always have a hot chick on the cover. On the other hand, the cover was so cool that I grinned for about two hours solid after I made it.  Two hours of grinning feels right to me.

For those who are now curious about the book, here’s a link to smashwords, where it is currently available. It’s free for a limited time, so if you’re interested in it at all, now is the time to download it. It will be available from at the kindle store on Amazon soon.

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/66778

We got a new refrigerator, so to make it feel welcome, I made a set of magnets.  Here are some of them, photographed in their natural habitat. To do a project like this, you have to have lots and lots of little pieces and different types of paper, otherwise they aren’t terribly creative.