2 Sconces and a Mirror Walk into a Bar

I took a clear plastic food tray scratched up the back and silver leafed it. Then I scraped and sanded through some of the leaf only to then paint over it with black gesso. The result when viewed through the clear front looks like scale antique looking glass. I cut up the plastic and pieced it back together, on top of a heavy aluminium pie tin oval, as a mirror sconce mosaic to amplify the light of Rana's beeswax candles.

The sconces were made out of iron wire, grommets, washers, wooden beads, and more shapes cut from rollededge of the pie tin. You can see the second sconce with a yellow candle on the far back wall of the kitchen (above).

While I had the mirror out, I thought I'd whip together (HA! nothing is ZEDEVER "whipped" together.) the little wooden hand mirror prop that the Birds in Hats characters will quarrel over. I sliced out a shape from 1/8" wood veneer. It was shaped sanded and painted (upper right) but I didn't like how the cabochon setting I was using for the mirror frame needed to be surrounded with more wood.

I built up a shape on top of the base out of a bead of hot glue and 3D paste. It was finished when dry and drilled to hang on a cord by the handle. What's cool about the silver leaf mirror is that it reflects things when they are close but the fall off is fast. This means that a camera directly opposite it can't be seen but brightly colored things like parrots, upper right, (or booze bottles, Mike!) can!

In my search to find my method for shooting Halfland with a vintage lens distortion and patina, I was tempted by the world of Lomography. They sell a TunnelVision macro lens wih the right spyglass look for $75 clams. ok. but what was truly cool is that rooting around the sites there gave me some insight and courage to experiment with optics of all kinds. I grabbed the plastic 35mm film camera I bought in the summer at the 99¢ store for, you guessed it, 99¢! broke it apart (not easy--good job, China!) stole the lens, backed it with foam and gaffer taped it to my silver box. Above* are the results! Uber macro detail (*these are low low res versions, the 7 mb files look amazing.) The items shown are less than 1" tall!