Mad Hatter Sign almost done!

Yay! Just need to seal my Mad Hatter Post and it is all done! Got around to painting his face on both sides and finishing all 88 hand painted letters and gluing them in place!

Found some inspiration while tackling all these projects with a bunch of new Disney movies I picked up at Costco! Snow White and the Huntsman isn't under that category, but still fits in with the general theme, haha! Watching Disney movies and working on projects has become one of my favorite things to do!

I ended up ordering some hats for the big day.. I hope they come in handy! If not I'm sure I can rock the dweedle dee and dum hats, lol. Normally I am in all out Pirate mode, but this is how my Pirate props are faring these days.. as storage for the wedding overflow!

Cheshire Restroom Sign

Finshed my Cheshire sign.. I only made this because I love the two in almost the same style located near the restrooms by Alice in Wonderland and right outside the line exit. I was playing around with the idea of having the sign say something else, but I figured 'Restrooms' would work! I can place it near the restroom entrance at the hall we are getting married at.

I used foamcoat to harden the sytrofoam because after all the work I did on several tombstones and my grail tablet they are fairly fragile. Foamcoat seems to be glorified plaster of paris and makes a protective shell as such. I then sprayed the entire thing with some Rustoleum textured rock paint, but I'm not 100% happy with how it turned out. The variation of colors they had to pick from wasn't the best and this was the lightest grey the had. I really did not want to paint a faux stone looking scheme because painting is my weak point, but I'm sure now it would have cost less and possibly looked better! Even after several coats of Foamcoat there were some areas that didn't get covered enough and spray paint lets you know that REAL FAST! I had some areas were the paint dissolved a large diameter and the foamcoat collapsed under its own weight! BLEH! I ended up pouring some modge podge in the areas that disenegrated and then sprayed over it when it was dry and all is well.

Stencil mishap... and 88 wood letters later!

Bleh! I spent the better part of last night making a stencil, so I could easily knock out the Mad Hatter Post today, but I could not get the stencil to cooperate! BLEH! I painted about six sides and the picture above was the best of the bunch. I was not going to try and create another stencil if I couldn't get this one to work, so I gave up for the night.

I was going to go back to doing it the long way and paint each side by hand this morning, but I really did not want to do that, so I thought it would be easier to cut the letters out of wood, HA! Wrong! This is probably the worst idea I've had thus far, but in the end I think it adds a little extra pizzazz! The letters were

extremely time consuming and a general pain in the arse to work with, but I am glad it is all over with! I still need to paint about 64 letters, but I think I am going to try and complete an arm a day, so I don't get overwhelmed. 

My job was certainly made easier by using double sided tape on the MDF board, so I could cut out three letters at once. Still a whole lot of cutting, but I am so happy I had some tape laying around because this cut down production time immensely. I still spent the better part of the afternoon (almost four hours) cutting the letters out and I won't be doing anymore letters anytime soon! Gluing the letters onto the arm and seeing on the post made me realize all the tedious work was well worth it! I do like the font that the original sign is painted with, but Adamms is my favorite font, so I decided to use it because it is funky enough to work with the theme!

An army of letters! Five hours later because I had to sand the double sides tape of each individual piece, EVIL! 

Starting to come together!

I was planning on getting the base coat on my heart foam things done too, but I barely had time to glue them together! :<( I still have the task of sanding and filling in nooks and crannies with wood filler prior to using my Foam Coat to harden the project! Can't wait to see these done!

Captain Jack is back! :)

Had some friends over for dinner last night and it was my job to get my Pirates in working order for a proper introduction because the first time they had seen it I wasn't home to get them all in working order. I don't think I ever posted a video of the finished product, so luckily I remembered to get a small clip with my camera!

The fog machine was nixed before they actually arrived, but that's ok! Probably not a good idea to run a fog machine in the house, haha! 

After seeing what kind of motion you can achieve from electric motors that Fright Props sells, I can't wait to make some more pirates! I always see the Cauldron Creeps or Witches stirring a cauldron, but I think it would be fantastic to have a skeleton pirate stirring a mop bucket and having a skeleton pirate down on his knees scrubbing the deck with a brush using a back and forth motion!