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.

Poe Gets Pwned

Today Poe watched the Notebook, and I found him later, next to the tissue box.

Poor Poe.

This is how I made the tissue box:
I took a small wooden cube, an interesting pattern from a magazine, and a tiny square of tissue.  Basically I wrapped it up the way I wrap a present (or, rather, how other people wrap presents, because I kind of... put stuff in bags or just hand it over or hide things under other things), took an oval of plastic and some tissue to make the 'opening,' and glued the scrap of tissue on top of that.

Swordtastic!

I'm don't drink, but friends of mine do, and when I saw this teeny sword I just had to have it!  (Thanks for the sword donation!)



The picture is kind of wonky, but I painted the blade with the copper leaf (the coverage was surprisingly amazing), distressed the handle with dark blue paint, and made a few shiny blue jewels.

Close up!  Poe's ready to kick some rear.

Happy arting!

Under my Umbrella-Ella-Ella

If I atoned for the rest of my life, I'd still never be forgiven for the title of this post.

This project is something I've been itching to do for a while, and I thought it'd be much harder than it was.  I took a cocktail umbrella (which I've always been kind of fascinated with, honestly.  They're tiny, functional umbrellas with moving parts, and people just throw them out willy-nilly!  They're cool) and peeled off the tissue paper, leaving me with a skeleton of the umbrella.  Then I used the tissue paper, which was all surprisingly in one piece, as a template to cut out the fabric I wanted to use.  It actually worked out brilliantly, because I chose spotted fabric, and there's one spot right in the middle where I cut out the center piece.

I glued it on and coated the whole thing with white glue, in part to stop it from fraying.

Cutesicles, right?  Happy arting!

Slots of Fun

Garage Sale Saturdays was a huge success!  I got material, watches to dismantle, and... a working slot machine.

I didn't have a table handy so I used a clay container.  Pretty neat, huh?  Though, I must say, the last thing that anyone in the dollhouse needs is a gambling problem.  The house is 80% full of depressives (see: Poe, Van Gogh, the Crow, Batman, etc).

I did some babysitting yesterday, and they had sewing stuff out.  I spent some time making a nerf gun holster for one of the little boys, and the other little boy wanted to learn how to sew!

The dress is entirely his design!  Great, isn't it?

 I love it so much.  We decided that it was Slytherin colors, even though Poe would definitely be a Ravenclaw.  (Get it?  I swear, the whole post was not just so that I could make that joke.)

Today is Christmas Eve, and as usual the Doctor is getting into capers.

All joking aside, there was a fourth wise man in the Christmas scene.

While the Doctor chatted with a young lady about politics (he's against politics, she's for them)....

...Van Gogh and Poe terrorized a tiny house.

Poe tried out the slot machine, but all he got out of it was some lousy Christmas cheer.

Van Gogh marveled at that strange square contraption.

The Doctor warned this young rodent about the dangers of tanning and...

...after that he flirted with a young lady that is way out of his league, and quite tall besides!

Happy arting and merry Christmas Eve!

P.S.  I'm sorry about all the editing!  This comp will only let me post one picture at a time!

OKAY SO!  I'm in the artsiest mood a person can be in, so this morning I made ornaments for the tree I bought at the dollar store!

And yesterday I made Santa hats for the three guys I brought with me (also, my lovely sister took all of these pictures for me).  Here is the result!

A closer look at both the tree and the books I made earlier in the week:

I made the hats with felt, as well as the gingerbread men ornaments.  The candy canes I made from bits of paper napkins and red thread!  I twisted the napkins into a thin snake, added glue and the thread, and kept twisting.  That gives it a fairly uniform spiral!

Happy arting!

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.

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!

I painted the rest of the cats into skeleton cats.

On a similar note, the Cheshire cat has gone missing.  However, I've heard a curious mewling from under the kitchen sink.  Will investigate tomorrow.

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.