Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

This post is definitely what we call a BANDWIDTH HOG!

Well, well…. once again quite some time has passed since I last posted so I think I’ll stick to the nice things that have happened since I last wrote and post a collection of the different projects that I’ve completed since the last post. It’s not as much as I’d like because I’ve been having trouble being up and about and all too many days have been spent doing nothing but resting as I haven’t had the strength to do much more. Today was good, and I spent an hour hiking through the off-trail hills in high park with Nefarious and a friend she made in the playground. As we walked, his father trailed us, playing some sort of a handheld steel harp and singing gently in an African language which made the walk even more worth undertaking, even if I’ll spend the next few days paying for daring the climb. I do not anticipate any bad news but I got my requisition a few days ago for my heart test (an EKG) to make sure none of the medication is damaging it.

Alright. Let’s get started on the meat of the entry. First of all, here are a couple of Lego figures. I made the ghost (for lack of a better label) and Nefarious made the ladder. As you can see both attach to the Lego blocks just fine because they have peg holes molded in.

Caitlin liked the little figures that I made for Nefarious and asked me to make her one too for a necklace so I made this little skull-masked fellow. I like how the details and the hand/foot shape turned out. Painting his robe with the snake and strawberries was quite tricky and I had to do it with a brush trimmed down to just a couple bristles!

Quite a long time ago I cast a set of plastic bugs when I was testing some reusable mold-making compound, and I finally got around to painting the set. You can click on the first picture to zoom in (it’s the only zoom-able picture in this post). In the second photo you can see that I mounted cylindrical magnets into the bottoms so they work well as fridge magnets.

I made this silly fellow with the clay masters of the gloves that I made for the child soldier toy. I don’t particularly like how it turned out, but still, I have developed an obsession about trying to turn all my leftover scraps into something fun, so at least that’s something…

Here’s another silly “ghost”. I do quite enjoy making these guys because they’re so fast and easy to create and are quite cute. Sculpting them only takes a couple minutes but I’m such a slow painter that I guess I may be stretching the word “fast” a little.

Now here’s a project that I’m very happy with, and one where the pictures just don’t do it justice. I had a crappy skull made out of hard foam that I cast a while back that’s been waiting for a project to give it some value. Nefarious recently had some boots fall apart, so instead of just tossing them I cut them up and salvaged all of the faux-suede/leather. After painting the teeth (including a gold tooth) and the nose and eye sockets, I used a glue gun to “skin” the entire skull with a patchwork of leather, plus a furry hairdo made of a discarded stuffed animal’s hide. To finish it off I made a couple of eyeballs, although they’re not glued in place and are removable. Perhaps one day I’ll get ambitious and put the eyeballs on a servo so it can look around the room and freak people out.

I also made a tiny little container, so small that I’m not even sure what could be kept in it — gemstones perhaps? It’s nothing too exciting, but the lid is nicely made with a lip, and it was my first try at doing flocking. I sprayed the inside with glue and then covered the surface with fabric fluff, so it has a sort of velour finish to it. Mostly a learning project.

After supper Nefarious spend half an hour biking laps around the buildiing and returned with a smooth rock that caught her eye. She asked me to engrave it for her, so she drew what she wanted and I carved it. She likes the idea of leaving it on a beach at some point so that a thousand years from now archeologists find it and attribute some supernatural goddess value to her. I thought it was going to be hard to do but it was surprisingly easy.

Finally, I got some metallic “mirror finish” chrome spray paint, so I quickly cast a copy of a cat skull and sprayed it. It is as advertised… I’m not sure if I have any “real” plans for it, but I’m sure I’ll come up with something.

Other than that, there are an equal number of in-progress and just-started and eternally-only-started projects lying around. Depending on my health you may well see a similar post to this in another week. Hope all is well. I apologize to anyone I haven’t replied to… I really am not exaggerating that I’ve mostly just spent the week resting. Don’t let the long lest of projects mislead you… At any give moment I ws far more likely to be prone than creating, let alone using the computer.

As always, apologies for not bothering to proof-read the above.