*Eat me* tags and two new signs!

Veronica and I decided to make eat me tags to adorn our wedding favors, so I designed these in photoshop and I was going to print them at home, but I figured it is cheaper having them printed on matte 4X6 pictures and we could cut them into pieces at a later time! I think all 200 + tags cost less than $10! That does not include the price of the grommets which I still have to find a cheap supplier of!

We are using the same idea for the wedding shower, but it has a slightly different back!

I need to stop looking at DaveLandWeb for inspiration ideas for Alice because it always leads me down the path to new creations! I forgot about two very similar styled signs at Disneyland and they look fantastic! I have had some 2 inch thick pink foam collecting dust in my storage shed for much too long, so I decided I could use it to try and recreate these pieces!  

I have a lot of working blending the pieces together and then painting them! I am going to cheat and cut the Cheshire Cat out of 1/4 inch MDF because it is much easier to get cleaner lines and I won't have to route the whole darn thing! I'm not really happy with the uneven lines around the border, but I'm hoping some patient sanding and wood filler will come to the rescue. I also chose this project because I bought some FOAM COAT about a year ago and have not had a chance to use it! I want to see if it actually hardens the styrofoam! 

Center pieces, Mad Hatter Sign Base, and odds and ends!

Finished making part of our center pieces! I'm now in charge of making a few card guards in the act of painting the roses red per table! I'm going to glue playing cards on the front and back of a piece of 1/4 inch plywood and cut out the heads, arms and feet for each card guard out of wood as well! I want to make the tiny fellas stand up on their own, but we will see!

I finally got around to making a post for my Mad Hatter sign that I have YET to paint the remainder of! I walked around Home Depot for twenty minutes looking for a post or some thing that I could use for the base, but I didn't find anything I was willing to shell out any money for, so I went home with the idea that I would make the post out of plywood strips and have it be hollow.  My Grandpa came up with a better idea and came to the rescue in the form of two beat up looking 2X6's! We glued them together and ran the post thru a plainer and it worked wonders! I've only seen this sign twice in real life, but I fail remember what the bottom of the post looks like... I consulted my refrence picture from Dave Land Web (awesome site with a ton of pictures for refrence, but there weren't any of this item in the angle I needed... oh well) I'm sure it is just cemented in place, but I thought it would look neat if the Mad Hatters shoes were at the bottom, so that is the route I went!    

Dinah my dog was also starting to become very fond of chewing on the corners of this project, so now that it is all painted, I hope to have it glued and hanging on the bathroom wall by the next month.. haha!

I posted last week that I also fixed my Broom Stick dog and here is the new video! The motion is a lot more fluid and doesn't bind at all. 

Adobe After Effect woes!

Hello!

It has been a hectic month and I have not progressed as far as I'd like to have with a lot of my pending projects! :( I did manage to fix the Broom Stick Dog by using a lazy susan to mount the head, so that is working excellent now, but I've been pulling out what is left of my hair trying to get started on our Slideshow!

I've never used a video editing program before in my life, but I figured because I've used Photoshop, Illustrator and Abobe Flash to some extent that I would be able to manage. Wrong. After Effects` interface is pleasant enough, but holy cow the options. Lets not even get into trying to burn said movie to a DVD due to all the codec and whatnot not cooperating! My computer is showing its age and it definately was not the time to get into programs that demand a ton of CPU towards rendering! My room has been about ten degrees hotter on average.. haha..

Anyway.. I finally got a decent copy onto a DVD using (windows dvd maker.. don't laugh its free!! but does not play nice with ANYTHING.. grr!) I have a ton of touching up to do and I'm debating on purchasing a different slide show portion because the one only holds eighteen pictures and it is streamlined to let newbies add pictures easily, but to add more image slots looks nigh impossible. We shall see.

I found an awesome tutorial on youtube on how to make a Walt Disney intro by the author Bollyweg. I wanted the original Disney intro I grew up on, yet I couldn't find a good enough resolution. I did like the Pirate of the Caribbean themed intro, but I will save that for another project.. haha!

I also remember seeing Walt introduce Alice in Wonderland on the Disneyland show during a Christmas special, so having our wedding in December and an Alice in Wonderland theme could not be complete without a proper introduction!

I'm still debating on having alice look down at the page and then it zooms in and our slideshow starts, or just fade into the book as the video shows. The sound is a little off as well, but I won't even begin to tell you the problems I had trying to get that footage off of a DVD I own much less the sound being synched!!

I'm glad I started this project now because I've played around for about twenty hours and I don't have much to show.. haha!

Broom Dog is alive.. kinda, sorta, a little bit.. maybe?!

Spent the better part of the week working on getting the motor setup for the Broom Dog, but it has not been cooperating! Unfortunately, when I made the broom dog I used materials I had laying around which was 3/4 inch plywood and it ends up being super heavy. The motor is not going to be up to the task of moving the head :<( I broke down and ended up buying a plan which I will never use ( its a waving Santa Clause from http://www.thewinfieldcollection.com/ which uses the motor I bought from the company and I want to see how the setup the linkage and connected the motor and see if I was close and then I can use their superior linkage design with my own characters.)

I may end up re-cutting the head from thinner lighter material, or I bought some lazy susans that may be a tigther fit between the body and head and it may take some of the weight off of the motor.

Either way it has been a fun learning experience. This will be about my forth animated project which I want to do more off. I already have visions of cutting the Hitch Hiking Ghosts out of plywood and having them hitching for a ride and their arms moving up and down, tehehe! :-) Not sure if I'm going to  put the Pirates out for Halloween this year and if I do there will be little change over last year due to all the wedding projects I need to finish! 2013 should be a neat year because I will have some extra money (hopefully) and it will mark a year where I have my own place and I can decorate inside and outside and go INSANELY overboard!! Thinking I may put the Pirate theme on hiatus and go with a Haunted Mansion Halloween and use everything over again during Christmas but turn it into a Haunted Mansion Holdiay... Can't wait!!

Less than four months away, eeek!!