Friday, July 26, 2013

What to do with beach ball eyes? I'm sure to find many things

Here's one:  As you approach the front door, you see this. 



Follow the arrow, and you encounter this:

Here's lookin' at you!





OMG Cookies Yum!

If you haven't heard of the Yo Dawg meme, it's now officially old by now, but here's an example of a practical application. Yo Dawg, I heard you like cookies so I put cookies in your cookies.   Cookies and Cream Cookies.  This recipe was on Instructables, and holy snap these cookies are goo-ood.  Vi and I made up a batch after much procrastination and dang, what can I say, yum. 
Ermahgerd! Kerkies!

Thursday, July 25, 2013

Tree eyeballs

This is another project I've been trying to get together for a while.  I saw the idea on Pinterest and wanted to do my own.  While at Partay Citay a few months ago, I saw they had an array of beach balls, but none that were solid white.  So I invested in some white spray paint, and some black spray paint. 

I spray-painted them white on the day that I got them, and gave them a few coats to ensure good coverage. The original beach ball was black and white, and I entertained the idea of masking the black part and using that for the iris but then got lazy and decided to paint the whole thing white, then paint the irises on, and follow with the white dot highlight.  As far as I can tell, that white dot highlight doesn't have a name, and is another way in which cartoons are not like reality.  If you have a white dot on your actual eye, see a physician.  I cut the circles for the eyeball stencils from an old pizza box, and sprayed them on last night. 

Now I just need to find the right tree to give the gift of sight, and figure out how to keep them from spinning around in the breeze.  
That's my daughter demonstrating the perils of loosely anchored irises

I also had an idea to try and make a mouth of some kind and make a tree into a giant puppet, but that will have to come later....

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Labor of love lamp


I started on this lamp a long time ago. I can't remember much to say about the rye whiskey, I haven't had a drink in a while.  I did like the bottle, and I drilled a hole large enough for the wire with a glass-drilling bit near the base. I used a lamp fixture to complete the first version of the lamp, but it was unstable, and the brown cord running through was unaesthetic. 
So I had the idea to fill the bottle with glass bits, and decided to use some of the blue glass I'd been storing for such an occasion. At first I tried smashing it up and adding the shards, but it seemed like the sharp glass was too dangerous. Then I decided to try and rig up a rock tumbler. But then a friend of mine had one, so I borrowed it and set about the task of making artificial sea glass. About 12 hours was enough to round the sharp edges, but I had to make several batches to fill the bottle. 

Friday, July 12, 2013

Luchador Mask

I

I've been working on this for a while, my luchador mask.  I used a pattern from online, but had to make some adjustments to get the fit more or less correct. The materials are silver lamé, screen mesh for the eyes, bias tape, and black pleather for the mustache. My luchador name is:  El Bigote Gigante ( the  Giant Mustache).