Chilling Instrument

I absolutly love this combination:

More about it here

EGADS!

Dear Michael's,

I really appreciate your enthusiasm of holidays, going so far as to start stocking your shelves with beautiful Halloween goodies in the middle of JUNE, but this is creating a problem.

What you don't realize is that by the time that October gets here, all of the glorious orange and black merchandise will be gone and in it's place, red and green and snow ALL OVER.

We Halloween Enthusiasts would like to see Halloween merchandise, during the Halloween season. Not Christmas stuff.  This really puts a damper on OUR uncomplicated holiday's fun.

- The Countess

Yes, Michael's is all ready stocking their shelves.  I took this picture LAST WEEK.  Last year, they at least waited till JULY.  I have photo evidence to support this ;).  They are starting earlier and earlier every year.  And while seeing these beautiful pumpkins excites me, it makes me sad to, knowing that just as I stated in my mock letter, that by the time our beloved season rolls around, the stores will be FULL of Christmas stuff. 

Bummer =(

Skull Chair

Yet another piece of amazing furniture that I want :)

Image from:  antiq-furniture.livejournal.com

Reaper Wing Progress

After last weekend's foley after foley, it was a breath of fresh, Autumn air when things went right this weekend :)

The projector is AMAZING*:

I made a copy of my wing sketch and shrunk it down a bit, so that most of the image fit on the projection at one time.  Here, I'm projecting it onto some foam from my bedroom, to the hallway.  I had to put up a plastic table cloth, to block out some of the sunlight from the living room, which helped to really make the image easier to see.

*Now, I'm sure for the more experienced artists, who all ready know about this technique, this projector is small potatoes to what is out there, but for the price I really think that this thing is decent.  It projects color pictures in color... which is exciting.... that in itself opened up the avenue to some other great projects that I've been wanting to tackle.  I'll share those soon enough ;) In anycase, for the home haunt project builder, I feel like this thing is fully sufficient.  The image of what you want projected needs to be shrunk down to 3.5 x 3.5, but that's nothing that a computer/scanner or a copy machine can't do!

Back to the wings!

Then I just moved the projector closer to the foam, till the wings were about the size that I thought I would need them.  Next, I whipped out the measuring tape.  I'm doing the wings in at least 3 layers as of now, so I traced layer 1 and layer two out on the 1/2 sheet of foam that I had left over from last year.  Layer 3 is too big for a half, so I need to get a full sheet to do that one.  Layer one is a little over two fee tall.

The traces were very crude, but it got the general shape and idea across so I traced over them and made some free hand changes.  I also printed out pictures of angel statues, to get ideas about what kind of details I want to eventually add.  Gairy helped  :)

Once I was pleased with the sketches, I brought them out to my new workshop and started cutting them out.  It didn't take very long, with a two nice, new razors.  It did require a lot of patience on my part though, trying to make sure that I didn't break the feather tips as I pulled the wing away from the extra foam. 

Above is layer 1 cut out and placed on top of layer 2, so that I could trace out the exact shape of layer 1.  Confused yet?  Don't worry, it all makes sense in my brain ;)

And finally we have layers 1 and 2.  I cannot wait to cut out 3.  These wings are going to be HUGE!  I'm also excited to work on the detail.  I think that I'm actually going to get to use my dremal tool on them this year.  

I'm hoping to get my hands on a full sheet of foam Friday. 

Stay tuned!

Happy Haunting!

- The Countess









HELP

Ok, I'm trying to move my blog to it's new home, which will still be on blogger, but my link will be spelled correctly this time ;)  (cemetery)


Does anyone have any experience with exporting and importing their blog, using a Mac?


The steps in the help are vague as to whether the user needs to manually save the exported blog to their hard drive themselves, or if it automatically saves, and if it does automatically save, where does it save it to and under what name?


Any advice would be greatly appreciated!


-Frustrated Countess 

Back on Track!

I went to Michael's yesterday to look for plan "B" for my reaper project.  I finally found what I need:

At the tune of $54, I was prepared with the coveted 50% coupon, which dropped the price down to about $30. I figured that it was worth a shot.  I was very pleased when I got it home and it projected my image perfectly on the wall as soon as I turned it on :)  AND it projects in color so the possibilities for uses is ENDLESS!  My husband is all ready trying to figure out how we can use it in the haunt ;)  Also, the bulb is just a regular old spiral bulb that you'd use in a regular light fixture, so that will be easy and cheap to replace if it goes out.

So now I'm antsy as ever to get my reaper's wings started. 

Here's the sketch that I'm going to use:

Pictures of progress to follow shortly!

Happy Haunting,
The Countess

Lessons Learned...

or "Back to the drawing board".  Yeah, it was that kind of weekend. 

I tried to work on three different projects this weekend and ended up right back at the starting point on all of them.  It was frustrating to say the least.

But, now I know what I need to do for at least one of them, to get the desired effect...

Heading to Michael's at lunch to look for my back up plan.

I may need some advice on one of the others.

Hopefully I'll have better news in for the next post :)