Saucer Sighting

After all the fun I had making my last "budget project", the Ion Cannon, I thought I'd have a crack at something else that appeared on my worktable recently.  Our "Stranne" lamp from Ikea has been flickering for a while and I replaced the cord switch, leaving me with this surplus item:

Yeah.  The project potential was obvious so I popped over to the craft store and bought some 1/2" wooden balls. These I sawed in half - surprisingly difficult to do evenly.  Fastened to the underside of the switch, they give us a retro-chic "Adamski" UFO look that many people probably recognize.

I decided to leave the cord holes, but added mesh inserts to make them look like some kind of sensor or port, and scribed some lines suggesting a ramp or hatch on one side.  Lastly, I added some view ports made from smallest brass washers I could find, and primed.

After a couple of coats of silver spray, and a few accents (ramp borders in steel and viewports in gloss black), I had a UFO!  Not too bad if I say so myself; a bit "clean", but it seems to suit the subject.  And as befits a budget project, it came in at around $8.00 (and some of that was Canadian Tire money!), including a fresh can of silver spray paint.

Scale is about right for a small "scout" type UFO...

(Note my lazy failure to fill the screw holes)

"'Klaatu Barada what', Mulder?"

Blindsight/Singing Sentinel

Blind Gunman
15 mm

Unable to finance costly cloned replacements or a set of bionic oculars, this freelancer has hacked a black-clinic neurode array to receive visual data from the scope on his blaster.  Great for gunfights, not so great for social situations.  An Ion Age miniature.

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Calamite Cantor
15 mm

While not a populous race, Calamiti are familiar to most other sentients, especially travelers.  The Calamiti believe in the Drowsy Gods, powerful beings who protect the universe from incursions by hideous, unspeakable terrors from other realities.  Their complex, multi-tonal chants, a familiar sound in many starports, are intended to keep the Drowsy Gods awake despite aeons' worth of age-weariness.  Musicologists have noted disturbing mathematical similarities between their songs and certain prayer chants described in the writings of the ancient human Abdul Al-hazred.