Fun With Ceramics

It's been a while, sorry about that. I've become obsessed with ceramics and they take longer than other stuff. Also I've been knitting a lot of devil and Viking hats, and you've already seen those.

I found a plain white ceramic cherub at the Goodwill, and failed to take a before photo of it. But if you've ever been to a Goodwill I'm sure you've seen one. Anyway, the Cherub told me that he was a demon from Hell and that his name is Zahgurim. He wanted to know if I could please paint him up to look scary. I said no prob.

I made him red and added his symbol from the Necronomicon. I used regular acrylic paint, did the symbol with a Sharpie, and gave him three coats of acrylic varnish:


He brought the skull with him. I didn't ask.


Here's his back:


Underneath him I wrote his name and the word used to call him, plus his number in the Necronomicon.


His entry reads:

"As ZAHRIM, a most terrible opponent. It is said ZAHGURIM slays slowly, after a most unnatural fashion. I do not know, for I have never summoned this Spirit. It is thy risk. The word is MASHTISHADDU and the Seal:" is the image on his chest.

Consider yourselves warned.

Burn That Stash

I finished a blue version of the Log Cabin blanket from Mason Dixon Knitting:
That's a regular 12-inch ruler for scale.

I'm sending it to my mother for Mother's Day. The photo's not too great since I suddenly remembered I hadn't taken one just as I was packing the box (quell surprise!), so I'm lucky I even got this.

I have no fear that my mother will find this post before Mother's Day as she is unable to recognize a computer when she walks past one, let alone discover and harness the magic of Blogger.

Happy Mother's Day!

I Am Acrylic Man

Zeppo's husband loves Iron Man. I mean REALLY loves Iron Man. So she asked me if I could knit up an Iron Man for his birthday. "Sure!" I replied confidently. "No problem!"

I immediately ran the project by the nearest comic book nerd (my husband) in order to sort out the details I would need to convincingly render Iron Man in acrylic yarn. He fired out this question: "Which Iron Man?"

Huh? "How the fuck should I know? What do you mean 'Which Iron Man'??" Of course there are variant Iron Men. I should know this by now. They all have goddamned variants. So there's an Iron Man that looks like the Iron Man you see in the current movie posters, and there's an Iron Man that looks like the boiler in your grandmother's basement. This would be the "Original Iron Man."

I took a look at both Iron Men and decided that rather than choose one and potentially break Mr. Zeppo's heart by choosing the "wrong" one, I'd just do both of them. Here they are in all their glory:


My husband took them for a test drive by flying them around the den while making the appropriate flying/shooting sounds, and declared that they both worked magnificently. Mr. Zeppo seemed to be pleased, and I wouldn't be surprised if he sneaks them into the movie theater this weekend.

Rock on with your bad selves, Iron Men.

2 Legit

Look what my friend Patti made for me:

How gorgeous is that? I hung it over my craft table so there is no mistaking that the doctor is definitely in:

That thing makes me feel more legitimate than if I had business cards and an assistant. And I promise my craft area isn't as dingy and depressing as that photo would have you believe. Thanks, Patti!! You're the best.

Keeping Sexy Time

Remember the Tu-Clock I made for Gaby? Well, I decided to make a Prince clock for my husband.

You'd be surprised how hard it is to find a poster for Purple Rain nowadays. At least I was. I ended up ordering this (gigantic, expensive) Japanese Iris print:
We were a little concerned about it being an Iris print and not a glossy poster because we wondered if the mod-podge would cause it to run. I ran some tests with some other stuff printed off an inkjet. The tests did not run, so we went for it, and it ultimately worked just fine.

I definitely wanted to concentrate on Prince's handsome visage, so I traced the wooden plaque right over the spot we wanted. I cut it out and decoupaged it onto the plaque.
After it dried I painted the outside edge black, because the gold paint I have is really transparent. Also you can kind of use the black to clean up the edges if they are rough.Then when the black was dry I painted two or three coats of gold.
Time to pour the EnviroTex Lite Pour On High Gloss Finish! (I have exactly one half of the 16 oz package left over from the Tu-Clock.) Which is horribly messy business, and your piece has to be perfectly flat on a raised surface (I put a block of wood under it), and you have to cover everything in a one-mile vicinity with plastic, and monitor for drips, and keep the temperature right, and be in a non-dusty area (which does not exist in my house), but is TOTALLY WORTH the payoff.Behold the drips. It pretty much keeps dripping the whole 72 hours. Do not worry about this, as there will still be plenty of acrylic on the piece. Even though it doesn't seem like there will be. Just trust me.

So he dried beautifully (except I got a gold fingerprint on the windshield before I poured the acrylic and it wouldn't come off that mod-podge for anything) and then sat around for about 3 months while I waited for my husband to do his part which was to sand the drips off the back and drill the hole for the clock kit. His desire for Sexy Purple Time in his office finally won out over his procrastination.

When he drilled the hole for the Tu-Clock there were absolutely no problems. He drilled a small pilot hole and then the real one while I cringed in the living room and tried not to cry. It came out perfectly. This time the acrylic did something weird -- there is a strange halo around the hole. I decided to make the best of it and used the halo to lay out the adhesive numbers. You can see it in this finished photo:The first photo I shot was totally a picture of me reflected back at myself. This baby is the very definition of "high gloss." Sexy high gloss.

The husband is very pleased. Now I just have to get him to hang it in his office.

More Shit for Gaby: Birthday Edition

This year for my dear Gaby's birthday I decided to paint up some of the blank nesting dolls I ordered from Golden Cockerel. Behold the Wu Tang Clan:
I used gloss spray varnish and shot these at night because I am a dumbass, so the flash pretty much blew out all the detail. Here's a closer shot of the big ones:
You may have noticed a little white girl in there. That's Gaby. She's always wanted to be in the Wu Tang, and I aim to please. Here's the back:
I purchased the 5 piece sets of nesting dolls, so this is two sets put together. They are all handmade so there is a slight variation in size between the two sets, which makes it look like maybe it's one big set. Do not be deceived.

Here's what Gaby got for Valentine's Day. I took an empty heart-shaped candy tin and spray painted it black, then decoupaged romantic stuff on it. The front:

The back:

Inside:

I made her a bracelet out of skull beads from Oriental Trading and a voodoo doll and some hearts from scrap fabric. Project: Fill Gaby's House With Love Offerings continues unabated.

Here's the one I made for my husband. Same deal, I spray painted an empty gigantic Altoids tin and then decoupaged it. Outside front:

The text reads "This time staying awake won't help you." I like to keep him on his toes. The back:

And inside:

Unintentional Moby Dick reference here. I just liked the image of the tortured whale. It seriously did not occur to me until my husband pointed it out. He was pleased.

One last item, since I've got Flickr open. While wandering around the Publix one day, I noticed that they were selling zip-up hoodies for $10. Why was the grocery store selling hoodies? I have no idea. Apparently Publix had no idea either, because the next time I saw the hoodies they were half off. $5 is a pretty damn good price for hoodies. So I bought the last three they had, which were baby blue, pink and black. If things go as planned, the blue and pink ones will probably appear in a future "More Shit for Gaby" post. But here's what I did with the black one:I don't have enough crap with skeletons on it, right? I painted this on with regular old acrylic paint. I almost didn't take this photo because I wanted to wait until after I washed it to get the pencil lines out. I'm glad I did, because this is what happened when I washed it:I have never had this happen. I paint on fabric all the time. I certainly didn't have this problem with the octopus sweatshirt. Maybe it's because I turned it inside out, or maybe I didn't let it dry long enough before I washed it, or maybe I angered the craft gods. In any case I think it looks even radder this way, and no paint got on anything else in the washer, so I'm going to put this under the Happy Accident column and tell everyone I got it at Abercrombie and Fitch.

That's it for now. I have to go order more nesting dolls.

Surprise! No "Before" Shot.

I swear to Christ I really thought I had taken a before shot of this painting. For over a month it's been hanging on the wall where I take my before shots. I naturally assumed I had taken care of this when I started altering it. Then I went through my photos and didn't have one. So imagine this without the skulls washed up on shore:

Here's a close up of the left bank:

There's a tiny skull peeking over the reeds in the middle, but you can't really tell here. And I forgot to measure it. Do as I say, kids, not as I do!

The next Church of Craft meeting looks really promising, so I'll come back later when I have more to report. Also we're getting really close to being ready to maybe finish that Prince clock. We had to wrap up some things in the garage before we got back to it. And I started another one of those log cabin blankets, this time in blue since I have tons of it.

As for these confounded before shots, as my friend Wilson likes to say, "I can't promise I'll try. But I'll try to try." That's apparently the best I can do.