I know someone else here on DA did this too, but to be fair to me, I didn't see that until *after* I made this, when I did a search, trying to figure out where the hell to *put* this deviation. XD The gallery directors like to keep putting my crafts in *photography* -- it's happened three times now -- when the point of the deviation is the subject in the photo, not the photo itself. *Gets down on her knees and begs* PLEASE do not put this one in photography!! The photograph is just the means to show the thing I made, for Frith's sake!! *Cough* Anyway. I'm sure that other people have made Arc Reactors too.

Actually, I can thank *Ferntree for sparking the idea -- she showed us the t-shirt she had made herself [link] , similar to the one with the glow-in-the-dark arc reactor shirt that's for sale [link] Money not being something I have in abundance these days, I toyed with using her template (she gave permission) to make one myself, but Hern, my crafting muse, had other ideas ....

"Glow-in-the-dark paint? Phah! You remember that thing we got from the MoSI exhibit last fall? Surely you can make an arc reactor with that? ..."

Took a lot of experimenting with different materials -- cardboard & clay -- before I decided my efforts just weren't working. Then I got the bright idea to cut out the bottom of a plastic cup for the case, and cut the holes in it. Okay, so it's kinda rough, but I don't think it looks too bad from a distance. (It cracked, too -- in two places. *sigh* Thankfully it's not too noticeable.)

The "guts" are: Clear plastic (taken from the packaging of my Iron Man Prototype figure), with paper behind it, and another sheet of clear plastic behind that, all hot-glued in place. There's that aforementioned thing from the MoSI, which was a microchip in a plastic pendant, with an LED -- the batteries are in the clasp of the necklace (and I have no idea how I will replace the batteries, as it doesn't exactly have a way to open it. *sigh*). The microchip necklace is hot-glued to a circle of cardboard; under the pendant is a bit of wire, just to keep the bottom of the cardboard from collapsing into the case. And then I just painted the whole affair with gray paint and used modge-podge to seal it. (I'm thinking maybe I should look into getting a silver marker to colour it, though.) It's all shockingly sturdy, too.

I think I'm going to have to mail it to a friend to get it to Dragon*Con, though -- I don't want airport security to think it's a bomb. XD

Gaia, please get Neal Diamond's "Turn on Your Heart Light" out of my head. >_<