Iron Craft 2016 Challenge #23--Hand Turkey Competition

For this challenge, we were asked to complete something for the holidays. I was planning on doing another project but something else came into play--a competition at work. First of all, we take our competitions at the theater VERY seriously. We have been down a little at the theater because of the election and the announcement that our show is closing in January. So, one of the actors decided to sponsor a Hand Turkey Competition. I decided to enter and share as part of Challenge #23.

I knew that I wanted to do but I just had to work out the logistics of how to actually make it work. I knew that I wanted to do a stain glass turkey. I knew that I wanted to do a double hand turkey. What I had difficulty trying to figure out was how to make the hand translucent so that color could pass through. Also, I needed to figure out how to allow light to show through.

Problem #1. Translucency

I started by drawing my hands to make the feathers of the turkey. So I traced around my hand.

My fat hands.

I then took this image to my copier and reduced the size.

Original on left; reduced on right

I then cut the smaller hands out of white card stock and glued it on top of the original image. I traced my thumbs on black card stock and mounted the thumb cut out on top of the white reduced hand image.

In doing so, this would allow the light to pass through the hands of the white image. I then went to Power Point and created a box with intersecting lines to create the stained glass background. I superimposed the scanned hand turkey image on the background. I used the send to back feature so that the hand turkey images would appear behind the background lines.

The second step was to cut out all of the white parts of the image (I forgot to take a picture of the result).

The third step was to glue tissue to the back of the cut out. I glued each piece in place and then cut/tore away following the black (lead) lines. I realized about half way through that it was easier to tear the tissue while the glue was still wet. The result was that the tissue would feather along the glue line and sped up the process. I originally was waiting for the glue to dry and then cutting with a scalpel. The technique ultimately used was to score the wet paper with the scalpel and then tear away/guide the paper while the glue was still wet.

In process (front of piece)

During the process, I got a little careless with the glue and the scalpel and wasn't entirely happy with the piece. I needed a way to clean up the piece so that it would become presentable. I decided to place the cutout within a folded piece of white tissue. This would help to conceal the problems and hide the mistakes. I then took a piece of black card stock and cut another smaller thumb cut out to act as the turkey body. I cut out a yellow triangle for the beak and added some googly eyes on top of the white tissue.

Problem #2--How to add light.
I took a clear acrylic box frame to present the final piece. The box frame comes with a white cardboard insert that keeps the image flat against the front of the frame. I cut out a rectangle from the front of the insert. I taped a piece of aluminum foil to the inside to reflect light. Then I fed white holiday lights through the back of the cardboard insert (where the mounting holes are located) and taped the lights to the aluminum foil. I used a set of battery operated lights. I then taped the battery pack to the back of the frame/cardboard insert.

Here is the final piece with the lights in the background. I am very happy with the way that this turned out. It has been well received and the judging will be on Wednesday.