Mad Hatter is.. animated!

Whoo Hoo! Spent the day getting the motor and linkage attached for the Mad Hatter and while it is not perfect it works.. for now! The arm is a tad on the heavy side and I am probably getting more play than what the motor was designed for, but for now it's going to stay! Just has to work for one important day and then I can make some more permanent changes! I should have bought a wood cutout plan that the plans on how to attach a motor to it already, but figured between my Grandpa and I we could get it to work and we did, finally! Would have saved a huge portion of the afternoon if I had bought said plans, but that is half the fun. I remember when I built my Flying Crank Ghost that it was not getting the full range of motion as I had seen in some videos and it was because I forgot to add an eye hook in the back to get the up and down motion, but eventually figured it out!

Excited for next week to get the Broom Stick Dog animated!  Sorry for the quality of the video.. I think my cell phone looks better than my $300 camera does... haha!

I'll take more pictures of the linkage and stand, but for now I'm excited to see it move! hehe!

Mad Hatter Sign Post progress..

Started painting the Mad Hatter sign today! Still need to add the text to all the sides, but I think I might make a stencil for that and save me some time! Still need to outline the hands, paint the white cuff links, but they are now painted on both sides in green and flesh tone! Going to fab up the post on Tuesday, so I can attach it to a base! 

Decided to paint in an assembly line fashion! Knocked out green on all sides and then the flesh tone! Definitely saved a lot of time. I was actually waiting for the sealer to dry on the larger Mad Hatter while I was painthing the sign.

I hate sealing projects. They never seem to work well for me! I'm using a satin Polycrilic and I tested in a small area before starting and everything was fine until I went over some of the darker areas and bam the black starts to bleed everywhere!! Sealing a project can make it or break it and it always seems to be the latter for me! :<( I changed my angle 100 times to make sure I brushed everything and it never fails that I miss an area, lol. Sometimes you can blend it in, but often the bottom layer ghosts under the next layer of sealer and it is plain as day if you know where they are at! As I said earlier this week the Mad Hatter should be fully operational on Tuesday! Can't wait to get his coffee arm animated!

Centerpieces, painting, motors and I am now Google's b!+?h!

My other half started making the centerpieces for our big day! She used some terra cotta pots, wood dowels, some hula hoop looking material, styrofoam balls and moss to make minature rose trees! They look awesome! I am in charge of making two or three card guards per table and have it look like they were painting the roses red! Going to base the dimensions off of actual playing cards and cut the heads, arms and legs and possible a body out of plywood instead of scultping each one out of clay like I have before!

Progress on my Mad Hatter sign is going way too slow! Can't wait to finish this! It should look pretty neat once it is all done. I have a lot of work ahead of me in sanding/fixing some flaws, but I'm not going to over analyze because I'm probably going to be the only one who notices. 

I don't know why, but everything I've painted thus far I haven't painted the sides! I figured I'd just go after it later and paint the sides black because I wanted to add definition. I should have just primed the whole thing and painted the sides black before hand, but live and learn!! Not looking forward to touching up everything I've done so far.. Story of my life! 

The reason I am painting the sides now is because I need to seal everything before I attach whatever I am going to use as a stand! Thinking of using some hinges and maybe making a triangle like bracket that quick disconnects and stores flat for easy storage! I also got in two motors so some of these will be animated! So far the Mad Hatter, Broom Stick Dog and the Cheshire Cat were designed in separate pieces, so time and money permitting I could animate them! I have two motors and I think the props with the biggest impact will be the Mad Hatter and Broom Dog! Going to hopefully finish both this coming Tuesday! Can't wait. Seeing props come to life is always fun for me! 

Also snuck in some time painting more of my Captain Hook advertisement! I also just found out Captain Hook will be in the new season of Once Upon a Time!! Muwahaha! I don't really get into a lot of shows, but Walking Dead and Once Upon a Time are usually highlights of the night! 

 I also ran out of space on Picasa because I've reached over 1GB of pictures! AHH! I will now be paying $2.49 cents per month to keep all my images up! Not that anyone is paying attention! Haha!

Crocodile Snot, Tweedle Dum and some unseen Slaughtered Lamb pictures!

Muwahaha, I was able to sneak in some garage time this insanely hot Wednesday afternoon and I finished cutting out all the elements to my Crocodile Snot advertisement! Wish I would have thought about the crocodile when I originally came up with the idea, but in the end it looks decent enough! This is going to hang up in our master bathroom! Still have about six hours or so of painting left and it will be a wrap! I hate cutting letters out of wood, but for this project it really was worth the extra effort! I think I can cut them out faster than I can paint them, but drilling holes out of each of the O's, the D, and E and setting up the scroll saw is tedious!! Can't wait to finish painting and seal this project so it can be on the wall!!

Here is a picture of me with my moustache twin! I'll refrain from posting scary pictures until next Halloween! Haha!

I also got in about an hour of painting Tweedle Dum and then I am almost caught up with what I've started so far with my Alice projects! I have a million more things I want to make, but Alice is slowly taking over our living room, lol. Running out of space for new characters and I can't find myself stacking them in a pile in the corner because I have fun looking at them!

Click below to see the recently found Slaughtered Lamb Werewolf kit photos!

Hook, Hook.. show us the Hook!

Ok, so the title wasn't from the correct Captain Hook movie, but that's ok! After our wedding in December it is going to be my job to remodel our bathroom! Just so we can keep our love for all things Disney contained into a somewhat general theme we opted to start designing our master bathroom with some Peter Pan flair!

We are going to paint our walls with pink stripes to mimic period wallpaper and I believe wainscot the walls to give them a more Victorian look. I've been writing stuff down and I can't wait to see what we can come up with. I don't think the skull rock fountain replica leading down into our Jacuzzi will ever leave the drawing board, but it would be epic to turn our Jacuzzi into a 3d diorama of Never Never land!! Now that I have that off my chest I decided to make something a little more practical! For Halloween this year I was *shock* a Pirate and I grew a real mustache! I've become quite attached to it and have yet been awaken in the middle of the night to the sound of scissors in my ear! Speaking of scissors in my ear I really miss that in the Abraham Lincoln display at Disneyland.. I use to cringe every time that part happened! Now where was I.. right, I've grown quite fond of my mustache and who better to serve as an ambassador for all things mustachey than Captain Hook!

I decided I'd try an attempt at making an advertisement for Captain Hook's moustache wax (proper English spelling I believe!) I cut out Captain Hook and a backing for him and then it hit me that it would look awfully plain. I started thinking of characters and I really want to incorporate the Crocodile into the piece. That way I can call it Captain Hook's Crocodile Snot Moustache Wax:  Finest wax on the Seven Seas at second hand rates, or something to that effect!

Here is what I have so far:

Here are some progress shots and what I believe I want to add to the piece. I don't like the moustache wax scroll in Tick Tock's mouth, but I wanted to leave something there for refrence.. I may add a log with Crocodile Snot on it, or maybe an oversized Moustache comb propping his jaws open.. Who knows.. Still going to play around with it a bit before I glue anything down! If I can't get the Crocodile in it to my liking I may just leave that aspect out and keep it plain ole Captain Hook's Moustache Wax! Still not too sure about the faux wood grain either.. I found a ton of cool tutorials on painting realistic looking wood grain, but I wanted to give it the cartoon appearance! 

Oh no.. No Netflix, Instagram, or Pintrest?!!

Last night anyone who has an internet connection or an iPhone (or thank goodness any smartphone for Instagram now) was thrown into the dark ages within moments as a storm left everyone without their favorite social networking sites! Instead of looking at stuff that I could be making I actually got to spend a fun evening DOING! muwahaha! Tonight was a craft night of epic proportions! Spent the better part of the day procuring glass candle holders, bowls, plates, mugs and anything that can be used as eccentric serving items for our Mad Party candy table! After a hearty meal my Fiancee started painting the assorted glassware and I started finishing up my Broom Stick Dog!

We are going to adhere some of the plates to the candle holder bases and use them as candy bowls.. should be interesting! We are going to get as crazy as the glue allows! 

Had to sneak in a picture of my art supply cabinet I made almost three years ago now! It's for scale.. I swear!! My coffee table coffin is still left unfinished and is the second place we are beginning to store art supplies.. Our house is being over run by paint, glass ware, and Plywood cutouts that are WAAAAAY too big!! I'm looking at hopefully getting some reindeer motors, so some of the props that I intentionally made in separate pieces have some movement!