My partner, @Rlynn listed beetles and dark academia as things she would like, so I landed on the idea of a big moving beetle. I put it in a shadowbox frame and was going for a mounted specimin look.
The beetle is made of laser cut parts, mostly wood, but acrylic wings. The motion is done with stacked lego gears. The top wings are on one gear ratio, the underwings on another, and the head is attached to the driving gear.
Once I had the motion down I superglued the heck out of the lego frame. The whole construction is epoxy glued to the frame back. It sounds like it came apart a bit in transit, but I guess not too bad since she was able to get it back together.
I painted the wood parts and embellished with gears and swarovski crystals for a kind of steam punk vibe. It was super fun!
This is absolutely fabulous. I could picture a gallery wall of these frames, all with different beetles, bugs & beings. So so cool. Thank you for sharing the back, too! I wonder what was happening behind the scenes.
I love your beetle so, so, so much! Thank you for the glimpse behind the scenes! Using legos for the gears was an ingenious solve for the moving parts and so effective. The contrast of those rainbow wings with the dark wood and gears is fantastic and so lovely.
OMG! This is so cool! It reminds me of Japan for some reason. We used to go to a pet store in a mall almost every weekend to get our Starbucks fix and we’d walk to the pet store to go see the large beetles. My son loved watching them in thier enclosure. Funny how the mind works and what it can remind you of things in your life.
Congratulations! Your Beetle with Motion is a Featured Project this week! 