Grammy Zombie Part 1

Alright, let's start on Grammy's head!

Grammy's head starts as a styrene skull that I bought last Halloween. Skulls are ALWAYS good bases for heads.

I took a pocket knife and cut her jaw away from the rest of her skull. Fortunately, the skull I bought seems to have been a multipart construct, so removing the jaw was REALLY simple.  I trimmed the back of the teeth some to make them a more realistic thickness.

The jaw is roughly wired/taped back into place, but hanging open. I like zombies to have their mouths open, because, you know, they are always hungry for brains or flesh.

I stabbed some bailing wire into her skull from the bottom to make a neck, then taped some card stock around it to flesh out a neck. The card is leftover packing dividers from my girlfriend's work. They're wax coated and not amazingly useful for art, but have been REALLY useful for construction material in projects like this, or for stencils and the like. Grammy Zombie is very inexpensive at this stage, and she won't get much more costly, I promise!

Now, I took some brown packing paper (The brown paper some companies wad up to cushion packages, instead of using packing peanuts) that I saved from packages I'd gotten (Yeah, I'm that cheap), and I glued it onto my skull and 'neck' with mod-podge. What we are doing here is half decopage and half papier mache.

More to come next time. More head stuff and starting the body!

(If you are actually trying to follow along with this, I'm sorry in advance. I don't know if this will be a 'tutorial' at all. I'm just talking through what I am doing.) Next part will be the body. It needs more bailing wire, more card stock/paper, more brown paper and more tape (duct and masking).

ZOMBIES!

Halloween is my favorite holiday, and that means I spend more time getting ready for it than I do other holidays. This year I'm adding zombies to my spooky yard.

As you can see, my yard last year was spider infested. I don't think that the spiders will be going away, but Zombies will be making an appearance.

Cara, the mummified corpse victim of the spiders is being upgraded to a zombie. She's getting a new(ish) paint job, some wiring to help her stand, and new hands.

We've got two new fellas joining Cara. There's Crawley and Walker. Crawley is half formed, and Walker is a fully formed zombie.

Crawley is complete at this point asside from accessories. I need to mess up his shirt, and maybe add an earring or something.

Walker needs his hands finished, he needs feets, and clothing needs to be aged and ratted up.

Think I may be adding a grammy zombie too...and IF I do, I'll be doing a walk through on how I build her. Until then, enjoy the zombies!

Warning: Personal Crap to Follow

I quit 'vaping' (smoking the e-cigarette), and have been nicotine/habit free for about a month now!

We've gotten a Keurig coffee machine and it is awesome. Coffee's taking the place of my cigarette habit. Good thing that studies show that coffee adds to longevity.

We did lose Mom, and my life's been kind of upside down for all that. I'm getting by, but it's a huge huge change. I always knew it would be just an earth-shattering change, but until it happened, I had no idea how it would feel.

Valentines, Secret Doll, Blogger issue

So, first let me just say that adding three pictures apparently makes my layout a mess, and I can see that. Ooof.

Next, this is the secret doll that I kept talking about but not showing. It was a Valentine's present, and she reads the blog from time to time, so I couldn't show it until I gave it. It is an articulated raccoon doll. His tail is all flexy, and he's stable enough to sit or stand. The third pic (of his butt) was to show off both his balance and his tail. This doll was built along similar lines to what I'm doing with the rat doll currently, so a 'how-to' is slowly forming for this thing.

The little animals around the raccoon in the picture are Sarah's Littlest Pet Shop figure's. I find them to be a little spooky, but she loves them. Eh, whatever. The long cracked looking thing in the background is a base left over from some of my Star Wars figures, which is a much better use of plastic than little bobble head animals, in my opinion.

Okay, so I've covered Valentines and the Secret Doll, so I'll get to the last thing. My blogger dashboard is missing all of the blogs I follow. I don't know if this is a temporary issue, or if the blogs I follow just all shut down at once, or if I was an idiot and clicked something that I shouldn't have...I'll look into it. *grumble*

As an update, I've done a few paintings that will get some attention later, and I'm starting on a new doll that will be less poseable and more...nightmarish.

Happy New Year!

As you can see, Baby New Year is upon us. Creepy little bugger, isn’t he? Well, the future is always scary. Of course, as it is New Years, it’s time for the new resolutions. I’ve only got a couple. 1st, stay on top of this blog. I tend to abandon it for long periods of time (this is typical for me. My DeviantArt account gets the same treatment). Second, stay on top of my Etsy store. I’m going to try to branch into selling on different venues, etc., but if I can stay on top of the Etsy store and the Blog, I think it will help.

Now, Baby New Year… The Baby isn’t actually Baby New Year, but I finally finished the little devil, and I sat on him for a bit, so I could unveil him today. The eyes are glass pebbles that I painted, the head is Super Sculpey, and the whole deal is stabbed onto a dowel rod, so I could move it about under the baby blanket. The idea is to carry around the little rod puppet, and act like it’s a baby until people want to see him. I think the shock value will be priceless. He may be incorporated into this year’s Halloween costume, but I dunno, yet.

Keep tuned, and I promise I’ll at least get some stuff posted for the next few days.