A question I get a lot about my spider project other than "Is it hard to come up with ideas every day?" is "Do you really make a spider every day?" Sometimes I miss a couple of days on my blog while I'm making spiders or I'm making multiple spiders at a time that all require time for glue to set or paint to dry, and I end up not posting a spider every day, but trust me I'm making one every day. So this one and the two that follow were in the works or I couldn't post (for whatever of life's reasons prevent me from it at a particular moment) and are getting posted all at once.
Spicada took time. I started with a completely different body and was attempting to plate the body with pieces of folded aluminum. That was a giant headache. And I had wings that I wanted to use for it that I started to entertain as possibilities for a different insect, which is when I dumped out my jar of plastic bugs and stumbled upon the kind of body I had been looking for to use for the cicada. From there, I painted the plastic, sanded the ridiculous gold off of the wings and painted and added patina to them, and I even made a little metal head armor type thing for the bug's head. I wanted it to look very metallic and old, and I think I eliminated the plastic look altogether. And of course, I had to drill holes for wiring the legs, and I drilled through my finger...again...and had to take care of first aid before continuing, and the I wired a couple of giant green eyes. Cicadas have those tell-tale bug eyes. I've seen them red, black, and green. The spicada has alligator green eyes, like this photo I found of a cicada.Okay, so the wings aren't very cicada-ish, but this is a spicada! Spicadas are different, alright?
Materials: plastic bug body, metal wing pendants, metal aluminum finding, green faceted beads, head pins, gray bugle beads, multi-color muted metallic seed beads, pewter ridged seed beads, silver wire