Two Toos and Dashed Dreams

Hello Everyone.
Hope you are all enjoying your Saturday!

I want to thank everyone for all the birthday wishes and wonderful comments on the 'alternative' Valentine views. :) They were all very much appreciated!

It's been a busy, albeit ultimately disappointing, week.

I did manage to get the fencing up on the right side of the yard. Only one more little piece to do and then the gate. YAY! It has been nice not having every stray in the neighborhood come through my yard. :)
My neighbors just finished up their fence today. It looks good. Now the dogs (mine and my adopted ones) can go out and run around and bark and carry on with trying to eat each other. Amy (my neighbor) was telling me how Cotton isn't afraid of anything....except Pixie (my Rat Terrier). All I could do was giggle. She can be extremely intimidating at times. We have yet to figure out why Pixie and Cotton don't like each other. Pixie is fine with Rocky and Newton, it's just Cotton. Amy says Pixie is just a bitch. Well.....yeah. She's my little guard dog. And she takes her job very seriously. :) LOL!

Guess what I got for my birthday? I GOT TWO TOOS!!  Two tattoos. They are both on my left leg. Around my ankle. One is a little skeleton and the other is a Goddess spiral. I am really pleased with how they came out. I spoke with the tattoo artist and he is supposed to be working up a price for the Phoenix (see last post). I'll have to wait and see how high the cost is.....maybe?? ;) Sally got one too. She got a butterfly/face that is really quite pretty. The pics aren't the best. Taking pictures upside down with a cell isn't as easy as it appears....

 

lil' skelly. you might have seen him on my hang tags

 

Goddess spiral.

Sally's butterfly. The wings are purples

I worked on my mask more at the beginning of the week and it was coming along nicely. Good shape, good depth, nice details. I set it aside on Tuesday to do one of many other things....Well, Tuesday and Wednesday we had an unexpected warm front come through. And the house was miserable. Warm (hot) and stuffy. Then on Thursday it cooled off so I went to go and work on my mask some more. It was cracked in several places. Not tiny little lines but huge fissures. So after freaking out and being totally pissed off, I decided I would do the mask in paper mache. I did two layers on Friday night and let them dry. This morning I added an additional two layers. I set it down in front to the heater to dry. I figured I would 'cut it out' because of the horns and long pointy nose. And then I would paper mache the pieces back together. It's not like this is the first time I've done this. Well, it might as well have been. The sculpt and the paper mache are destroyed. The paper mache wouldn't release from the clay. And then promptly ripped and collapsed. I am not a happy camper. But I refuse to let this hamper me in my quest. Here are some photos before all the bad juju...... No pictures of the aftermath - I was too busy throwing a temper tantrum and various things around the room.

 

not too shabby :)

 

side view

 

first two layers of paper mache. the little white globs are glue

On the plus side, Forrest's mold is completely dry now and my neoprene should be here some time in the next week. I guess I had better get started on another mask. I just can't stop in the middle this time. :) 

My manikin is 3/4 filled with expanding foam. I can't believe this thing is taking so much foam to fill. I inserted a 1 inch dowel rod the last go round. That way it will 'stand'. I did however learn an important lesson when dealing with expanding foam. Don't be lazy! Put your gloves on!! The first time around I didn't make any mess (yeah, I know....scary!). So as I was preparing the second batch I realized, in the middle of things, that I hadn't put any gloves on. Oh well, after all I didn't make a mess the first time. HA HA HA! In the process of mixing, pouring and holding onto the dowel rod I managed to get foam up my arm, the side of one hand and the back of the other. Let me tell you, expanding foam is a royal pain to remove....even from skin. This stuff sticks to everything! It took me over two hours of soap, water, scrub brush and acetone to get this stuff off. And I am still picking little piece here and there. I assure you, it will never happen again. Lesson learned!

Last weekend I got a message from AT&T that my phone needed to be updated. Now, being that I do IT work all week, I promptly put this off. Well, I decided that I would do the upgrade. Actually two upgrades. Yes, I was that far behind. First off, they can't make things easy. No, you have to download the upgrade to your PC and then to the phone. What a pain. After what seemed like forever (two and a half hours) I finally got the upgrade completed. I have had nothing but issues with my phone since. The upgrade has changed all my settings, all the locations of my buttons and half of the 'normal' programming. Then on Thursday night we had a storm roll through and screw up AT&T's service. Which is still not fixed. It sends messages and photos and phone calls as it sees fit. I am totally disgusted with my phone. Now I understand why my Dad turned ours off. Yes, I spent almost all of my high school years without a phone. My Dad just didn't want the hassle of dealing with a phone. I am so tempted to do the same thing. But, my daughter is on the west coast and my son lives too far away to not have one. Damn. 

Well, I am off to work on the manikin and probably the fence. Wish me luck. Enjoy the rest of your weekend and have a fantastic week!!

TTFN

p.s. ~ this is my 101st post. I think I may have a give~away when I reach 125. Or when I reach 50 followers...which ever comes first. So pass the word and let's see which one happens first. I'm going to be trying out a different pattern...so who knows? :)