The Town Clock

Headpiece made for Natassha N for the Mz Gay Halifax Pageant.

Town Clock of Halifax located on Citadel Hill

Headpiece made on my kitchen counter 

(with artificial turf lined shrug on the body form in the left background)

And mounted on Natassha's head

The entire set was made for under $20, including paint, glue sticks and materials.
The clock is constructed out of salvaged foamcore (a seating chart for a charity event held by the Nova Scotia Mental Foundation), wooden dowels from the dollar store, a ping pong ball, a cat toy painted white and an old plastic bowl covered in water activated packing tape and given a faux copper finish.
The shrug is made froma hula hoop, artificial turf, glue stick and a couple toy cars from Value Village.
Total amount of materials: $18.50.  Total amount of  time building the set: Approximately 24 hours (including drying time).

Introducing : Gourdon Stein

Here is the final product of about 40 hours of work. I took a few pictures of the process, which I'll be adding to this post once I can compile them all (as they are scattered over three cameras).
But the essential process is a combination of ideas from Dave Lowe (thanks for the googly eyes painted as rivets), Stolloween (pretty much the better part of the construction and recipes).
Paper mache, mache clay, some hot glue and pieces of this and that I had lying around and clearing out old paint bottles I've had for at least 4 years. Truly an exercise in recycling and reusing and reducing what clutter I had in my workspace. I gotta say this is one of my fav pieces I've ever made.
He sits about 20 inches(500mm) high and is roughly 36 inches (900mm) round at the middle.

Here are the final pics as his top coat was drying.

Stay tuned for the steps involved in his creation in a separate post.

Apparently it's a bad thing.

Yes, Martha Stewart's Halloween Handbook is out and I bought it. $10.95 Canadian and totally worth it.
It's not just the fact that it's full of tricks and costumes and good ideas (which quite frankly, about 50% at least are on the her website anyways) that made me by it, but I've always been impressed with the way that it is put together. High photo gloss pages front to back, excellant layouts and fonts to die for....I need a moment to collect myself.
I should get something from the magazine for plugging it, I think.
Most of my friends make fun of me a little for buying it each year, but then they remember how much I love Halloween and that I pretty much buy it and everything down to colouring books with a Halloween theme.
I found a few little things that I might try to do with my personal celebrations, such as the mice silhouettes on the stairs made from black paper. Simple, but I finally have stairs to do it on.
Alright, I gotta get back to my paper mache pumpkins that I'm making again this year finish up my spellbook I posted about earlier.
I'll leave you with this airbrush and ink Halloween bat by yooki42

Great Ideas with Barbies

Just found this link through an instructables round-up.
This woman makes amazing pieces of jewellery from parts of Barbie Dolls and it's simply blowing my mind how simple, kinda creepy and wonderfully unique how each piece is.
Of course, I'll post a couple of my fav's up here.

Chest Neck Piece

 

Perfect Six Pack

Blonde Ken Head Ring

Check out the link above and enjoy!

DANGER GLOVES

 

Found this in the hallway at the hospital outside the engineering department.

Check out my *Disco* Balls

So, what do you do when you have electric tape, emergency blankets and an exercise ball? One makes a HUGE disco ball!

Just some final touches to go.

The texture isn't AS smooth as I'd like it to be, and the camera really picked up an all of the imperfections it has.

Quick rundown of the process:

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  Supplies: 2 rolls electric tape, 3 emergency blankets (only used one, better more than not enough), scissors, tailors tape, exacto blade, exercise ball, photoshop, 37" TV screen...how lucky.
• 
  
  First, I did a google search on how to make juggling balls and softies and stumbled across this blog that gave me all the info I needed for working out the dimensions . ( see diagram/pic)
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  .

• 
  
  My exercise ball was 62" circumference, so I did the math (even though ti hurt a little, but no pain no gain) and worked out a basic pattern ( which I've provided here....click to download if you'd like it, but keep in mind it's for a 62" circumference ball....modify as needed, your mileage may vary.) and put it together in Photoshop.
• 
  
  

• 
  
   After transferring this pattern to a piece of freezer paper (traced from the screen), then to vinyl, I went about cutting the 6 pieces I needed. NOTE: Cutting emergency blankets is easy provided you have sharp scissors and keep the material taught. Scissors just glide through it.
• 
  
  Now, lining up the end points with the top and bottom of the ball, I used electric tape(easiest to pull off and not tear the emergency blanket material, not to mention provides the contrasting texture I needed) to adhere it to the ball.
• 
  
  Using my heat gun I heated the material up and smoothed it down. Don't get too close or you'll melt the material. Also, the ball precautions mention not putting it in temperature ranges above 32c (which a heat gun surely exceeds). After smoothing down one section, I let the ball cool by a fan before starting the next section. Though I'm sure you could do this with a hairdryer, it would take a bit more time.
• 
  
  Go slowly and carefully. This is not a hard project, but can mess up fast.  I have the option of
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  Keep in mind: This is only my alpha test of production, but I'm happy with the results for what I needed to make. Also, I cut the pieces a little larger than I thought as I never really trust my math, but turns out my math was dad on.
• 
  
  After you've got the 6 pieces taped on and smoothed down with heat, go ahead and put another line of tape in the middle of the sections you've just done to make it look as if there are more panels.
• 
  
  Then using the lines on the ball as a guide, start taping longitudinally ( I hope you know what I mean) to make more sections.
• 
  
  Go over it again with the heat gun to smooth it out, and you're pretty much done.

A couple notes about the process:

Be in a  well ventilated area. The fumes from melting plasticy material could be dangerous, I dunno, but I was beside a window with a fan to extract the fumes and cool the ball and material off as I went.

Take your time. This is pretty important. You can get into a groove where you think you know how the material will react, but all it takes is a small little piece to overheat when the phone rings or the cat starts meowing and you're screwed for a perfect finish.

Put the ball in a large mixing bowl or something like that.Think *egg cup*. It keeps it from rolling around and getting away from you when you're working.

I'll take some pics of it when the stage set is complete and let you see it in it's final role. I intend to set this on a record player and let it spin from a platform about low-desk height.

The Country Show

Well, you saw the old picture I did of Their Majesties with the American Gothic look? Well, there just happpens to be a country themed show coming up, so I whipped this up pretty quick for the upcoming show.

ISCANS Gothic

Just playng around in photoshop for a potential show in the future.

Disco Fever Set Designs

Alright, here's something a little differant for me to post on here.

I was coming up with ideas for the set, so I sketched them out, like I normally do, on a few pieces of legal or tabloid size paper. Liking what I had drawn, I figured I might as well send these off to the othhr people who would be a part of its construction, or at least in the show so they could see how minimal the set was going to be and might be able to swing by and offer 10 minutes of work.

What's the easiest way to send a sketch? Scan it. Well, my scanner wasn't working properly, the only way to fix it was to install the original drivers from the cd...the cd that was packed up for the big move.

Ok, take a digital pic of it. No good. Camera is dead and the charger is in Cole Harbour. Damnit.

Fine, break out the Wacom tablet and have a go at it. i haven't used it in about 2 months, so I'm rusty already.

Here's the product(s):

Version 1

Version 2

As you can see, a rushed effort with an unfamiliar tool results in kinda crappy expression of ideas. The scond try was a bit more relaxed an effort resulting in a significantly better outcome.

Disco Fever Poster for ISCANS

Ever try to photoshop out an afro from a black room...not easy.

Overall, not too bad I think...

Elle's 5 Year Show

A poster for my friend Elle celebrating 5 years of performance.....uhm...in excellance....or sumthin....

Trailer Park Trash Poster

This was a poster for a show about 2 weeks ago. All done in photoshop, and my first time designing with my Intuos/Bamboo pad. Had to whip this out and make it look trashy.....just as a note, the set had a full sized outhouse that the performers walked out from....HA!

Posters for Coronation

Well, it's come to that time of year.....my one year of service to my community as Emperor of Halifax and All of Nova Scotia has come to it's final days. We end our year with a huge celebration of fundraising, brotherhood/sisterhood, family and friendship. We call this Coronation. It is the night we bring the new Emperor and Empress to the seat of power for a year, and we, the former Mnarachs, step down and take our role as Dowagers for their year and just be there and support them in their year.
These are the basic posters for the events. They were designed to sit side by side and have something of a regal look to them.

Overall, I'm alright with these, but I'm always my worst critic for these things.....any comments?

New Years Day Table

I got the honour of designing the table this year for New Year s Dinner. Threw these pics up on the ONE resolution I made this year (Creative Everyday Challenge) and feel really confident I will be able to hold this one through

 

I suppose the funnest part of this was when I stopped thinking and just DID it.....gotta love old server skills in action.

For the daughter

For my big sis.

Mummified Fairy

The other day I came across a Mummified Fairy Tutorial. 

My friend Nicol and I went absolutely ape-shit crazy thinking about how creepy it was. So, I stopped by the Dollar Store on the way home and picked up the supplies I needed and it turned out great!! So much so that I ended up giving it to her, cause, well, she really loved it.

Sorry there are no process pics, but if you go to the tutorial, you will see almost exactly what I did anyways.

Haunted Tree Stump

So this project was one I've been debating for a while. I was in a creative mood and not feeling like bringing down the recycling. So, i taped 3 2L bottles together twice and interlocked them into a tall form. Then I wrapped a piece of cardboard around them to make a cylinder.

I added strip paper mache and added toilet paper tubes for old branches.

I then added the paper mache clay to beef up the structure.

When the clay was added, I used a butter knife to shape the bark.

LOVED how this part worked out.....nice and clean. After this, I started to add colour.

 

Shot with the hand to give you an idea of the scale.....about 2 x 2l pop bottles high I would say.

Haunted Busts

So, yet another inspiration from Stolloeen.  The haunted busts struck me from the first time I saw them and I was determined to make some for myself.

I started off with some skull heads from the dollar store (to save on time) glued to old liquor bottles.

 

I cut out a basic form I wanted from cardboard, masked it up with masking tape and tweaked the design a bit.

 

At this point, I had a few toilet paper rolls available to me, so I cut them in half, taped them up again and made them into the base for a cape type form.

 

 Here you can see the shoulder plates that were added.

Here is a pic of the boys together after I added the paper mache clay (oooOOOoo so much fun to figure out.....). On a side note, DO NOT let paper mache clay sit at room temperature overnight....the smell is ungodly. Also in this pic you can notice the rib cage and sternum added under the collar.

Finalized Pumpkins

So, here's some pics of the stages of the pumpkins. They are currently on display at the Office of the Dartmouth General Foundation.

This is my favourite one...my roomie has deemed it the 'Cancer Pumpkin'.

Here's a texture shot.......mmmmmmtexture.

Top shot of them as they dried.....the greener ones have a more 'undead' look to them.

This was the second to last stage. I had brushed them with a glue/water/orange paint mix. The orange was added so I knew where I had covered. With the surface already being white, the glue was hard to see, so a heavy tint that would help in the shading was added. They were then sprayed white for highlight ideas and then green for the tops, and then a quick airbrush of a yucky black to give a little contour base.