Three Project Pile-Up

I finally got some shots of Gaby's Xmas present:

Ain't he a little minx?

Here's an old one I failed to take a picture of, before and after:

Seriously, these photos are terrible. Our house is so fucking dark, like a cave, which is how we like it usually. But it sure sucks for taking photos. Anyhoo, there's a pair of demons in the Necronomicon that I named them after and I can't remember right now who they are. Can you tell I've had like 12 hours of sleep this week? I just really want to put these up before I forget again. And there's still one more I can't post because it hasn't been delivered yet. It's March, so the Xmas present delivery is right on schedule.

This Xmas my boss gave us our gifts in blank tins that he says he got at the Container Store. I've been holding onto mine while trying to decide how to mutilate it. Pretty much the only choice for a tin is spraypaint, so I decided to make a stencil. Who's the world's greatest philosopher/mathematician/social critic, living or dead? That's right, Bertrand Russell. So I Google-imaged my favorite shot of him:

and then had my husband put it in Photoshop and blow out all the contrast. I traced it onto the clear shelf paper I use for etching, affixed it to the lid, cut it out with an X-Acto, and then did about three coats each of black spraypaint and clear varnish. I peeled off the mask and lookie what we got:

I was pretty pleased with how that turned out, so I opened up my most excellent Bertrand Russell Quote App and started searching. I quickly found one that encapsulates my entire world theory (he's good like that), sketched it out on the shelf paper with my handy template, slapped it on, cut it out, and spray painted it. This didn't work as well and a good bit of the painted letters peeled off. Also there are lines where the paint leaked under the blue painting tape I used as a mask between words. In a bid to salvage the quote, I repaired some of the letters with sharpie. "I'm a genius!" I thought to myself. "This will work perfectly!!" Unfortunately, as soon as the spray varnish hit the sharpie, it ran like a bitch and made a huge mess. It was too late to turn back, so I just let it dry and did two more coats of varnish. Here it is:

The quote reads, "The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible." Take a gander at the "u" in "Russell." Yep, that's what you get when you hit sharpie with spray varnish. As you can tell from the direction of the smear, I had the tin upside down on a stick so I could spray the whole thing at once and not have to turn it. All in all I figure it could have been worse.

And I think, were Mr. Russell alive today, this tribute would mean more to him than his Nobel Prize in Literature. In fact, I'm positive.

Head-Shelf Celebrities

Thrift stores are filled with stupid little ceramic shelves with bases made of cherubs surrounded by vines or roses or some other foofy shit. This trend must have completely slipped past me because I've never seen them in anyone's home, possibly due to the fact that they are heavy and inconveniently sized and always seem about five seconds away from ripping the nail out of the wall and crashing to the floor. Which would really be for the best.

I've been actively ignoring this crap for some time. But I finally found one that intrigued me and seemed to have potential. It was intriguing because it looked like Tiny Tim but was tarted up like a cheap whore, complete with rosy cheeks, pastel eye shadow and brazen lipstick. My failure to take a before photo sickens me, mostly because I was driving home repeating, "Self? Make sure you take a before photo of the Tiny Tim Whore Head-Shelf." Instead I immediately sprayed it with Krylon black primer.

Yeah, that photo is terrible. Here's what I did to it:


Now it's Undead Tiny Tim. Seriously, what would you put on one of these? A candle? When it falls to the ground it will burn your house down. A snow globe? It already weighs a ton. These things make no sense to me.

Want to see what else doesn't make sense?

Why does this thing look exactly like Thora Birch? Behold:


Seriously, does anyone know Thora Birch? Because I would totally send this to her. I might come off like some twisted stalker, but if there was a head-shelf that looked like you, wouldn't you want to know about it? I can't really alter this one because I would be turning Thora Birch into a zombie. So I don't know what I'm going to do with it. Right now I'm concentrating my efforts on removing some gross green gunk from the top, probably used to unsuccessfully affix a snow globe or candle:

Ms. Birch? It's yours if you want it. Holla. (Love your work!)

Post Xmas Roundup: Non-Xmas Edition

In the middle of the Xmas rush, it apparently seemed like a good idea to do a bunch of extra shit that wasn't on the list. Some of it wasn't time consuming, such as the day I discovered Krylon "Short Cuts" in fluorescent colors:

Come on, you knew I had to eventually do a Hot Pink Jesus. Other stuff was more involved. Here's a before shot:

And after:


This was conceived as a potential brother present.

Here's one I just finished a couple of days ago. Before and After:



Awwww, baby vampire cherubs! And they appear to be musical prodigies!! AWWWWWW!!

And lastly, here's something I found in Goodwill that's already so horrifying that I couldn't possibly improve upon it:


Seriously, this is the very embodiment of "can't sleep, clown will eat me." Couldn't make it any worse.

I've got something varnishing right now, but if I post it I won't be back until like August. So that's it for now!

Post Xmas Roundup: Ceramics Edition

The parade of idiocy continues:

1. I wrapped Gaby's gift without taking a photo of it, then refused to open it because it was the last of my NASCAR wrapping paper. Photo to come.

2. As usual I randomly took photos, so some exist and some don't. The ones that exist are sometimes really shitty, which I think is a combination of misjudging the light in my sunroom and being in a hurry to wrap stuff for Xmas. Thank Cthulhu for the correction tools in iPhoto, however unlike the mighty Cthulhu they are not all-powerful.

3. There's at least one gift that hasn't been delivered yet, so that one has to wait.

On with the clownboatery. Shockingly, this one actually has a before photo. Here's how she looked at the Goodwill:


Ain't that a purty mouth? Seriously, what were they thinking with this? Don't worry, I fixed it:



In this close up you can see that at some point her head had snapped off and they reattached it. I decided to add the stitches instead of pretending it wasn't there. Also, have I mentioned how much I love the Krylon black primer? Have I? Have I mentioned that?

Next up, this is what I gave to my brother that got the painting in the last post. I would skip the before photo, but I didn't take one. *SHOCK*


Apparently my sister can't even look at this. HAAHAHAHA!!! I guess she won't be receiving any of my "art." Luckily my brothers are as fucking sick as I am, so here's what the other one got:

Man, I thought I had a closer shot of that one. It was probably too dark and useless. That sucks. Also I should mention that I started painting this about three days before I discovered the Krylon black primer, so that's why it's flatter and not as shaded.

Here's the last Xmas one. Before:

After:

This one is a little different. I accidentally put too much red on the mouth, and at the angle I was holding it I got an optical illusion that the mouth was missing. So I decided to make it even worse by carving out the bottom lip with my block cutting tools. It's sort of chalky so it wasn't hard. That made it look raw and alien-like, so I slapped a bunch of paint on it to make the mouth look more gruesome. Unfortunately in this shot it totally looks like that bottom lip is still there, which is odd. Here's another angle:

And here's an accidentally artsy-fartsy one:

Oh, as a teaser, here's Gaby's "before" present:

Isn't he saucy? Tee hee! I should have an "after" shot soon. Next up, some non-Xmas-related projects that happened. You know, if I took photos.

Post Xmas Roundup: Paintings Edition

Tons of Xmas stuff to post, now that it's been delivered. In the interest of saving both space and my sanity in battling with this interface, I'll just post the "afters." And anyway I never shot a before of the second one. But we're all used to that.

First up a painting for my brother. You can guess which part I added:

If you guessed this, you were correct:

Here's one I did for some friends that are less twisted than my brother:

Who loves frolicking yetis??

Awwww!!! I'm going to leave it at that for now and do the ceramics in another post. Happy New Year!

Seriously? June?

Sorry about that. Let me see if I can catch up.

I bought this at the Goodwill (for $4.99, as you can see). It's kind of weird in that the whole thing is ceramic but it's made to look like the bust is mounted in a frame.
The previous owner tried to slap some paint on the "frame" in a shitty fashion, but the rest of it was pretty much primed and ready. So I did this to it:
I forgot to measure it but it's probably 5" across and 7" high. And heavy as hell. Seriously, who's idea was this? What a bizarre little item. Anyhoo, it looks way better now.

Here's another abomination, direct from the 80s:It's roughly 2 1/2 feet (almost) square, and if that's not giving you nightmares, imagine two of them. That's right, it has a buddy. But I will spare you that one for now because I didn't put the images in flickr yet. So I decided to do a dinosaur for my friends' brand new son Wyatt:Awwwww....look at that little face!I tried to give him a nice mohawk with his head plates.

I'm working on some stuff for Xmas that will probably have to remain secret, but there are a couple of things still lodged in the camera that I will get up here soon. I PROMISE. Also while I was gone Flickr and Blogger both conspired to make it a whole lot damn harder to post photos. Sure wish they hadn't done that.

Snow White Samara

The woman at the Goodwill told me this is Snow White:



She said there were seven dwarves and someone bought all of those. I was quite displeased that I missed out on the chance to horribly alter a bunch of dwarves, but I bought her anyway. She's ceramic and appears to have been in someone's yard, as her hollow insides contained potting soil and spider webs before I cleaned her up.

I'm still making the most of that Krylon white primer I found in my garage. It is the greatest discovery I have ever made -- this shit is the bomb. Great coverage and a nice powdery matte finish. I was so excited that I ran to Home Depot and bought three more cans just so I'm never out of it again.

After the primer I painted her up with acrylic to look dead and waterlogged sort of like the Japanese girl-ghosts that are All The Rage, with a wet muddy hemline and a gray wash over her face. Three coats of poly and here she is:





Everyone asks what I'm going to put in her lap there where she's holding up her apron. The problem is that it slopes, so anything I put there falls right out and I would have to glue it on for it to stay. I can't think of anything good enough to commit to right now, and I think it's kind of creepier that there's nothing in it, so I'm leaving it for now.

I'm still working on the log cabin blanket made from all my leftover acrylic yarn, and it gets more hideous by the day. I'm also in the middle of a painting for a friend of my brother and I'll get that up here when I finish. Today I was pleased to find actual "before" photos of it in flickr. Yay me!