Old Hag comes to life!

It's been a slow start to the October season! :<( Delusions of grandeur pretty much from November first last year and I didn't get as much done as I wanted thus far. Thirty days left. 30 days. Doh! Need to fine tune the stroke of the linkage to have a little more movement in the hand, but it is at least moving at this point!

Figured I will put in work on this and the Magic Mirror and just detail the rest to look good instead of quanity over quality! Really wish I could have enclosed the porch in with a facade, but that just means I can try it again next year!  

Magic mirror next to the wall.. who is the fairest of them all?!

Made some progress on the mirror! So much left to do! :<( Already started scaling back due to time and money. I still want to enclose the porch, but that may be a pipe dream at this point. I am going to animate the witch using the motor from my cheshire cat, so at least between the two I will have two functioning props! 

 

I still need to rig up lighting for this prop before I take any more videos! I really need to get on playing with synching the light up with the mouth to make the mirror fade in sync! 

Another thing I started is my Store! Hopefully want to figure out something I can produce and make a nice product that people will enjoy and I make some money back considering cost of goods and my time! We shall see how motivated I am keeping it stocked with stuff year round. I think after Halloween I am going to devote time to the shop and maybe next year I will be financially better to build some more items and expand my base of what I can do! :)

Magic Mirror Progress!

Ended up making a stand for the mirror to get it off my craft area! This isn't screen accurate, but hopefully I will be the only one to notice! Haha! 

Stand is made up of 2X4's and only cost about $16 to make. It doesn't get better than that! 

I was worried about not being able to lay out the curve of the mirror correctly, but a simple solution revealed itself using a stack of printer paper and some tape! I just taped paper together and rubbed my finger over the edges and it made a sharp crease and I just followed the crease and cut out the template with some scissors! I used the template to make the arch below and then free handed the snake design onto the wood. I was proud of myself because I usually will use Illustrator/Photoshop to make an outline and scale it to full size, so when I print it I can trace it onto plywood accurately. I rely on the computer way too much sometimes and I hadn't had time to draw it up on the computer and print it, so I just winged it. Didn't come out all that bad. Crown was made using a compass and a ruler. 

I purchased some fancy chauvel (sp) mirror hinges, so the mirror will be able to tilt on the stand if I need to control the lighting some what better. Once the mirror is all decorated, I will need to work on the guts of the project. The mouth is being driven by a scary terry servo, so it opens the jaw up when it hears sound and it returns to close when there isn't any sound present! I am going to try and use a scary terry servo for the lighting as well, so the mirror will illuminate inside a few seconds before the mirror speaks and a couple of seconds after it stops! That way the inside light isn't blinking on and off!

Craft Room!

Hello, 

Been lagging on the blogging part, but only because I have been busy updating our craft room! My wife has been selling her hair bows at a fairly frantic pace and has been wanting a larger work area, so I found some pictures I liked and decided to craft my own! The table and bookshelves were made entirely out of wood sourced from LOWES. I normally go to a lumber yard for projects, but I wanted to make this some what inexpensive. Making the furniture out of oak or popular was out of my price range! I am happy with how everything turned out and she enjoys it more than her small table pictured on the top right!

Finally got my old VW running, so I could get more material! Between about two Disneyland trips, working on the VW and putting a new tire on my motorcycle I've been lagging on my Halloween projects! :( 

Both shelves have casters on the bottom, so we can wheel the shelves around. At first I thought it looked neat, but they have also come in handy! The small desk has been gifted to my sister in law and now both book shelves are placed against the wall on each side of the window!