No Bones About It

Today I made a skeleton!  Rather, I took a dollar store skeleton garland that looks like this:

And fixed it up a bit.  I gave it actual joints beyond the shoulder joints and the hip joints.  This next part is a little technical... I noticed that the shoulder joints were connected to the upper ribcage, which is entirely incorrect, so I connected it instead to the clavicle (the collarbone, which, on these little plastic guys extends right to where the shoulder joint would be).

How did I do this miraculous thing, you might ask?  All you need is a piece of cardboard, a pushpin, and wire, and scissors.

Using the cardboard as a buffer, I pushed the pin through the skeleton to make new holes, one a little above the knee joint, one a little below.  I did that for the knees, shoulders, wrists, elbows, and cut the joints apart with a scissor.  At this point, I filed the edges down a little with a nail file.  Finally, I strung the joints together with wire, and painted the whole thing.  In the pictures, the eyes look darker than they are; I mixed a middle gray so it wouldn't overwhelm the rest of it.

Here he is, chilling with Poe.  Poor Poe.

As you can see, the party is spirited and a huge success.  Some might even say... to die for.

As you can also see, I actually have a really amazing photographer taking pictures for me.  Thank you Thomas, you're the best!

Toad is going as Batman (posterboard mask, an extra cape).  The Doctor is going as Doctor House (a paper cane, twisted with glue to keep its shape).

  Van Gogh is going as that redheaded doctor in Grey's Anatomy.  Look at the resemblance, it's eerie.

Oscar Wilde is what only Oscar Wilde can be: a bird with ridiculous plumage.  This is all out of paper and gloss, attached with plain clear tape, turned inside out and hidden.  And I made Poe a pair of Groucho glasses with pipecleaners, wire, and paper.  Poor Poe.

You can get a better shot of his tail in this one.

The candied and caramel apples are made of paper and aluminum foil on toothpicks, painted thickly with watercolors for the deep color and shine.

The lollipops are foil and tissue paper on wire; the other candy is foil and tissue paper.

The Halloween baskets are part of this ridiculous drinking straw that they sell at the dollar store.  I scored cut lines with a scissor, and because the plastic is hard I didn't want to risk cutting through and ruining a scissor.  I used a wirecutter for that, and it worked fine, half of the time.  The other half, I ruined the pumpkin.  Thankfully, each straw has four, and it comes in a package of several.  Then I covered it with orange tissue paper to give it a nicer texture and a less plasticky shine, and added a wire handle.

The triceratops is a horse for Halloween, with a little rider made of foil and tissue paper.  The rider is actually a tiny Van Gogh, with orange yarn hair and beard.

The 'organic zombie' growing out of a flowerpot!  Okay, I've seen this somewhere before, but I don't remember where.  Basically, I used one of my mess-up hands from the dolls I'm trying to make, painted over the skin tone with green watercolor, blotted when needed to create that gross, mottled look, and made a 'seed packet' out of posterboard and part of a skewer.

Look at how pretty that lamp looks under decent lighting and a good camera!

Annnd here's my Halloween costume.  Bowties are cool.  Trust me, I'm the Doctor.

If I've been quiet, it's because I've been finishing my Halloween costume!

I won't tell you who it's of, but I'll tell you it's a member of the house. (There will be pictures.)

Fingers crossed that I can whip up a Dollar Dollhouse Halloween party at the last minute.  Wish me luck, honeybees.

There will be candy, there will be mayhem, there will be terrible puns. 

Welcome to another one of my terrible blurry photos!  But the thing I'm photographing is actually pretty awesomeshaped.  It's a little crooked, so I'm going to try to weight the base, but I was just too excited to wait to do that.

The skulls come from a dollar store necklace (they already had the holes in them, so, perfect!)  I painted them white and drew the designs on them with sharpie.  Then I strung them on a skewer with beads in between, and added and repaired a broken lampshade that I got in the big pile of dollhouse furniture that my buddy gave me.  The very bottom is a pill bottle top. 

Better pictures will hopefully come eventually.  Happy arting!

Fiftieth post!  Which means imaginary champagne for all.  Feel free to leave me a comment; let me know how I've been doing, what I can do to improve your mini-perusing, and what I ought to do next!  I take suggestions!

Since it's the fiftieth post, I wanted to make something especially pretty.  I had my dad drill a hole in the skull that came from the body that I made the skele-table with, fixed the weird dent in the back of the head that all of these skeletons come with, and went to work!  A vase!

White acrylic paint and sharpies, plus a gloss finish.  The flowers are cut out from plastic water bottles and colored with sharpies, then shrunken and warped with a heat gun.  Seriously the most fun thing to do ever.

The colors in real life are actually a lot more vibrant.  One day I'll hold a photographer hostage and make him take pictures for me.

This is just when I was trying to get a picture of the back of the skull and ended up getting an unflattering picture of my torso and volunteering name badge.  Happy arting!

When I was trying to figure out what I wanted to make next in a tizzy, a friend suggested a Halloween tree!  It seemed like the perfect use for the little tree my sister brought with her from South Africa, but you can use a tree-looking stick, if you want to!

I apologize wholeheartedly for my blurry photography.  Just pretend that you're viewing the picture through a sheen of frightened tears.

The skulls are just paper and glue, the sphere-y bit is pre-crumpled paper (to soften the lines), covered in glue, and rolled up.  The lower jaw is folded separately.  Details drawn in pen.

As for the little skeletons... string and posterboard.  The joints are little overhand knots. 

Then I sandwich the insides in, and curl string around the black posterboard for the ribcage.  Happy arting!

Today was super duper easy.  Following in line with my October theme, I made a Halloween costume for a turtle that I got at a garage sale.

The awesomest thing ever?  Maybe.  Happy arting!

Look at these guys.  Seriously, give them a click, and take a good long look.  Isn't their paint job a little... scary?  I got all five of them in a pack at the dollar store.

All I did is repaint a couple with good ol' fashioned acrylic.  Now the house has the Cheshire cat, and a skeleton cat.

Quick post today.  I made the attic ghost for the dollhouse.  Her name is Lenore.  I didn't make her for Halloween; honestly, I just wanted the house to have an attic ghost.

Here she is, chatting with Poe:

Making her was simple simple simple.  Much easier than pie.  I just took t-shirt material, slathered it with glue, and let it dry over a plastic baggy and a pen that was large and rounded, for shape.  Then I sewed on eyes with eyelashes, and cut out flower shapes, and sewed that on with a gold bead.

Voila!  The house is haunted.

Pay no attention to the scarecrow.  He's just writing hipster poetry and doing the Kanye shrug.

All like: "Whatevs, Kant is overrated."  All like: "Mozart was a two-bit hack. Way too mainstream."  All like: "I don't even scare crows, I just tell them that they're poorly deconstructed bourgeois sheeple."

Today is a day for bats in the belfry.  I know I say this a lot, but you really have to click this to make it bigger, otherwise they're just black blobs.

I made them with wire, black electrical tape, and foil for the body. 

First I made the 'fingers' on the wings with the wire, threading them together.  Then I applied the tape, sticky side to sticky side, so the outside was rubbery and black.  I pressed it down, and it made the 'bones' stand out, like for an actual bat.

They need names now. Any suggestions?  And as always, happy arting!

Halloween approaches, my most favorite of holidays!  So I'm going to make Halloweeny stuff for the house.

I realized this scarecrow was going to be a hipster when I had to spend three hours trying to turn jeans I sewed for it rightside out.  Super skinny jeans of the skinniest sort.

Basically, all you have to do is sew clothes, give it a pipecleaner skeleton, and sew the pants to the shirt, the head to the neckhole.  I used needlepoint canvas for the burlap, because it looks just right for it.

Batman is wary, mumbling about some sort of waterbird.  The Doctor looks guilty and is muttering about things he did when he was John Smith to some sort of sanguine family.

Look at how cute  he is!  He is like a cutie mccuteberg.