SLA Archives - Evermore Stud.io

I have a fair amount of custom-embossed Celtic key pattern velvet left from the pillow project. I was thinking some of it might make a cool drawstring bag. I may have gotten a little carried away with the details:

Silk-lined round-bottom bag
A new Celtic knotwork ring design for a laser-engraved faux-leather bottom
Kumihimo braided drawstring
Customized skull beads
Second set of skull beads from scratch

There is a separate post with the design files for the floss separator I made for this, in case it is of use to anyone else.

It was a lot of fun and, I’m happy with the result. Of course, I shot video of every step of the construction of both versions of the bag.

Drawstring Bag (Bottom) — Celtic key pattern embossed velvet dice bag with faux/vegan leather bottom engraved with Celtic knotwork, hand-braided kumihimo drawstring, beaded pulls, lined with yellow silk.

Drawstring Bag (Interior) — Celtic key pattern embossed velvet dice bag with faux/vegan leather bottom engraved with Celtic knotwork, hand-braided kumihimo drawstring, beaded pulls, lined with yellow silk.

Yellow and green kumihimo braid — Yellow and Green Kumihimo Braid

Counterweight Bag — Counterweight bag made from an old yukata

Cow bone skull beads with red seed bead eyes

I used some hand-carved cow bone skull beads in a recent (forthcoming) project. I like the look there but, they are pretty rough. Someone was showing me some tiny hand-carved wooden skull beads and, I wondered if I could come up with some relatively easy way to produce some more detailed skull beads. My under-used SLA resin printer seemed like a good option.

I created a remix of a full skull model by Arminas Didziokas. I used MeshMixer to remove the lower jaw, make it solid and, put a hole through it. I printed a few at different sizes to get a feel for what would be best.

After curing, I primed them with Montana Cans white primer. When that was dry, I dug out my old Aztek 3000S airbrush and gave them a coat of something more of an aged bone color. Next, I did a simple dark brown wash on two of them them and, a black wash on the other. They then got a light coat of matte polyurethane to protect the paint.

The holes probably need to be somewhere around .5-1mm smaller and, my painting technique needs some work. It was challenging getting the wash to stay everywhere I wanted it and, the highlights got muddier than I would prefer. Overall, though, I think they look pretty good.

Another possibility for future attempts would be to use the 3D prints to cast these in something else.

Note the dime in the scale pic. These are a little under 1cm wide.