Faux Tesla Coil Halloween Project Update

Happy Halloween everyone!

I am sad to say that my project did not finish on time for Halloween.  The tower is complete.  The anthropomorphic pumpkin man is covered in paper clay.  The paper clay is not yet dry.  We have had days of rain from Hurricane Sandy.  The humidity is so high that the paper clay is still damp and cold.  I expect it will take a few more days of drying time before the parts are ready to be painted and assembled.  The good news is that we were in the outer areas of the storm and only received rain and moderate winds.  We did not have any storm damage. 

It is disappointing that the project did not finish on time.  At times like this, it is important to remember the old saying, "It's not the destination, it's the journey."  I would not have traded the trip to the mountains, dinners with friends, or any other aspect in my life just to finish the project sooner.  I possibly could have pulled a couple of all nighters early on and had the project done on time, but is that really worth it for a hobby?  My faux Tesla Coil Halloween project will have a place in next years Halloween decorations. 

My pumpkin man will need a little repair here and there before it is painted. Paper clay sometimes cracks as it dries.  There are a few cracks on the pumpkin man and several on the steam powered generator.  Once the parts are completely dry, the cracks will need to be filled in and allowed to dry before I can paint.  

In the long run, not rushing to finish the project sooner will have a positive effect.  I will have more time to embellish the project.  Once the basic concept is complete, it is time to ask some questions such as:  "Where can I add some embellishments?"  "What can I do to add to the story?"  "What needs to be added to make the scene more  balanced?"  If I declared the piece done because it needed to be done by a deadline, some important elements might have ended up missing.  So, I will be working on a Halloween themed object in November.  That is not all that unusual.  I work on Halloween throughout the year.  It is my favorite holiday.

Halloween Rattles

I saw an article about these rattles in a magazine of Halloween crafts a year or two ago.  These rattles looked like a fun project, so I thought I'd make a couple.  I no longer have the article, so I am not able to attribute the design to the original artist. The face designs are not mine, they are similar to the faces in the article.  I did make some changes to the magazine's way of making and decorating the rattle that I thought might be of some interest to my readers.

The magazine used a purchased paper mache ball with some beans added to make it rattle and a stick picked up from the yard.  The stick was glued to the paper mache ball and then the ball was painted.  A floppy ribbon was glued onto the stick.  This was a quick and easy craft project. 

Of course, I like to take things up a notch now and then so my project added a few levels of difficulty.  First off, I covered the purchased paper mache ball with a layer of paper clay to make the rattle stronger and more durable.  (Note to parents:  this adds a significant bonk factor to the rattle.  Make sure little ones don't hit each other over the head with these.)   The added layer of paper clay gave a larger area for gluing on the dowel, which makes the rattle less likely to come apart.  I used a dowel rather than a stick, because the smooth dowel has a better gluing surface than a stick. I painted the dowels prior to gluing them to the balls.  Still not a whole lot of difference, but it makes the project more likely to last.

Where I made the big change was in creating my own ribbon designs and in stiffening the ribbons.  I wanted to blog about this because I want people to understand that they are not limited to what the commercial market wants to put out as the year's designs.  When I could not find ribbon that interested me, I created my own ribbon designs.

First off, the ribbon is wired ribbon will hold its shape, but once the items are stored away for the year the ribbon gets crumpled and loses its crispness.  I wanted to avoid that because I make my projects to last for multiple years.  I used plain black and plain orange wired ribbon to begin the projects.  Once the ribbon was glued to the neck and tied to a pleasing shape, I painted the ribbon with multipurpose white PVA glue.  This glue is white going on, but dries clear.  I gave the ribbons two coats front and back. The glue makes the ribbon stiffer than it was with just the wired edge.  The ribbons have remained crisp and stiff for two years now without cracking or losing their shape.

For the pumpkin rattle, I used the little reinforcements that you put around notebook paper in a binder.  I painted them orange, then painted tiny yellow dots on them with a toothpick.  Once my reinforcements were painted I peeled them off their backing paper and stuck them onto the ribbon which already had the layers of dried glue.  Then I added another layer of the white PVA glue over the reinforcements.  The glue sealed in the dots.

The orange ribbon was also painted with two coats of the white PVA glue.  I wanted polka dots but was not able to find any in Halloween colors.  (That doesn't mean that this type of ribbon does not exist, it is just that my local craft shop did not have it.)  To make the polka dots, I painted some small adhesive dots black. (The type used for coding documents.) Then I stuck them to the ribbon and covered them with a layer of glue.  I ran into a problem at that point with the dots.  The orange ribbon was translucent enough that you could see the shadow of the dots through the back of the ribbon.  As problems go, it was not much of a problem really.  I could have just left it as it was.  Or, I could have painted more dots and added them to the back, however, trying to get the dots lined up exactly with their counterparts on the front would be challenging.  I decided to color the dots on the back with a permanent marker.  It worked well, and you would never know that the dots were not the same as the dots on the front.  One more coat of glue over the marker, and the project was finished. 

What I would like my readers to take away from this post is that they should think outside the box when it comes to adding embellishments.  Re-purposing household items to other uses can bring about unique embellishments to your art work. Even when the idea for the art work comes from inspiration from another artist, you can make this work of art your own with unique embellishments.  

Because of the weight of the paper clay, the rattles are a little top heavy, but they stand up nicely in a small flower vase.  The photo above shows the rattles standing in with some of my other Halloween decorations and some purchased ceramic pumpkins.

Note:  The painting behind the decorations is an original water color by Ron Prim.

Faux Tesla Halloween Project-Part 8

I've been called in to work, so this is going to be a quick post.  The tower is assembled and glued to the board.  I had originally planned to make each tower look like Tesla's Wardenclyffe tower, but when I put them together the scaffolding drew your attention from the electrical bolts.  There was just too much of it.

I used a Dremel tool to cut down off the bottom section of the scaffolding so that more of the copper coil was exposed.  I covered up the S curve on the bottom of the metal piece by using a piece of thin balsa wood.  The balsa wood has lines drawn on it make it look like planks have been set across the platform.  As this piece is about a traveling show, I want everything to look like something temporary; something that can be broken down and taken away.

The anthropomorphic pumpkin figure has been created and is ready for a layer of paper clay.  I am using paper clay on this piece because I am running out of time and the paper clay will dry and be ready for painting faster.

Jack in the Box

I apologize for the formatting on this blog post.  Since the article was fairly long, I wrote it in Word and pasted it here.  Blogspot always gives me a lot of grief about adding pictures when I do this. The pictures are here, but not in an orderly manner.  After the better part of an hour of trying to get the post to look right I just had to go with what the blog platform would allow me to do.  Please scroll down to make sure you see the whole article.  There are more pictures and text after the blank spots.

My Jack in the Box is the fourth in my “Jack” series.  Jack is an archaic word for a mischievous nature spirit.  This piece is a play on words as it is an anthropomorphic Jack O’Lantern as well as a Jack in the Box.  I made this as my Halloween project last year.  This particular box is not a true Jack in the Box because it does not spring open.  It is merely made to look like one that has already sprung open.  However, it is a bobble head figure, which is quite popular in Halloween pieces.

I made the box myself from corrugated card board.  I had intended to start with a purchased cardboard box, but could not find one the size I wanted at my local craft store.  I cut out a box pattern, scored the cardboard and taped it together.  Then I covered it with paper maché.  Even after sanding, the box was not as smooth as I needed it to be for painting, so I covered the paper maché with dry wall compound then sanded it smooth.  Not only did this make for a smooth painting surface, it also gave additional weight to the box, which helped balance the top of the box.

The Jack O’Lantern is a doll shape with a wire armature.  I had actually made a number of doll bodies with the intention of having the basic doll bodies available so I could make themed dolls without having to start at the beginning each time.  (My husband said it creeped him out to see all those doll bodies with no heads.)  The armature was wrapped with batting, then string, and then given a skin of muslin.  I added the wire for the neck and made a head from aluminum foil which was covered with paper clay.  The head and features were painted with craft paints and then varnished.  The pumpkin shaped body was made from fabric that was sewn onto the doll body.  It was then stuffed with fiber fill, and painted with a mixture of craft paints and fabric medium.  The “melon” arms are hand painted fabric using the same mixture of craft paints and fabric medium.  (There are fabric paints available for purchase, but a bottle of fabric medium turns any paint you have into fabric paint rather than having to purchase additional paints.)  The doll was painted before it was stuffed into the box.

 

The box is painted to tell the story of my pumpkin man’s adventures on Halloween night.  I wanted to portray some of the themes, games, folk tales, and merriment that go along with Halloween in this piece.  There are so many different ideas that it was hard to decide what to put in and how to present them.  I hope to preserve some of the stories and customs that are fading from our culture.  Each panel of the box tells a story.

The front panel elaborates on the theme of strangeness of Halloween night as well as portraying the game of bobbing for apples.  Jack is using a fishing line to try to catch something from that barrel.  Even the cat thinks this is bizarre.  I chose to have bobbing for apples in this section because although you hear about the game of bobbing for apples, it is generally not played at Halloween parties today.  Most people don’t want to put up with the potential water spilling or soggy costumes. While bobbing for apples is played and talked about it is becoming a thing of the past.

The panel on Jack’s right (your left as you face Jack) shows a group of anthropomorphic pumpkin men dancing at a bonfire while another pumpkin man plays a drum.  A bon fire is a traditional Halloween practice.  There is something special about being around a fire at night.  It is a time to let loose with dancing, drinking, and storytelling.  If you have missed this, make time for it in your life.  It is really something special whether it is part of Halloween or just for fun.

Costumes are the trademark of Halloween.  To add that idea I painted the back panel with Jack in a matador’s outfit.  Black cats are also a theme of Halloween, so I have Jack brandishing his cape at a cat, rather than a bull.  Halloween is not just about strangeness.  It is also about playfulness and silliness.  I hope that this panel represents these ideas.

The final panel tells a folk tale.  Old world folk tales said that spirits would come out on Halloween night and stay until the cock crowed at dawn.  This panel shows a pumpkin man shushing a rooster, telling it to be quiet, as other pumpkin men sneak past.  The pumpkin men want a little more time out before the cock begins to crow.  People that live in cities may not know this, but farm people will know that a rooster will crow any time there is a disturbance.  Strange creatures about would certainly make the rooster crow early.

The top of the box features a spray of stars.  This is one of those cases of when you can’t fix a mistake, turn it into a feature.  I started out with a few stars.  I wanted to add the constellation of the Big Dipper (Ursa Major).  However when I added it I made a mistake and had it too close to the original stars and it crowded the initial design.  I turned it into a spray of stars to cover up the mistake.  Sometimes you have to just roll with it.

Next blog:  New pictures of the Faux Tesla Halloween project.

Faux Tesla Coil Halloween Project-Part 7

Painted cross beams.

The title of this blog post should be And Then Something Weird Happened. I had a materials failure and I'm not totally sure what happened.  I had all the cross braces for the towers painted and I was ready to start painting on the varnish sealer.  I painted the orange cross pieces with the gloss varnish with no problem.  Next I started to paint the black cross pieces and that is when I ran into problems.

Beginning the construction of the tower.

Last week I went out of town.  I was rushing to pack and rushing to get paint and varnish on the cross braces so that I would be ready to go to the next phase of the project once I returned.  I'd paint the braces, go pack, return to the studio flip the braces over and paint the other side, then go pack some more. Putting the varnish on the orange braces was no problem.  When I started to put varnish on the black ones the problem started.  As the varnish went on, the black paint started coming off.  The white gesso primer coat was showing through.  My first thought was that the paint had not been given adequate time to dry.  I put varnish on a few more braces before I decided that this was going to be a problem on all the black braces.  And that is the point that I went out of town for a long weekend.

When I returned, I re-primed and repainted the messed up braces.  I allowed them to dry overnight to make sure the paint was completely dry.  The next morning I started to varnish them again.  And the varnish removed the black paint again.  I was rather puzzled by this because the varnish and paint were made by the same manufacturer and it was definitely for this type of paint.  Also, the long pieces of the tower had been painted with this same paint and had not had any problem.

I recalled that when I had painted the long pieces I had used a gloss medium and varnish combination.  That varnish did not dry completely and the pieces were very tacky.  They picked up dust and stuck to each other and would not dry.  That is why I went out and bought new varnish.  I had painted the long pieces with the new varnish which dried nicely.  I concluded that the gel medium had protected the pieces from the new varnish stripping the paint.  So, reluctantly, I concluded that I would have to repaint the black cross pieces once again, then cover them with the gel medium/varnish mixture, then the new varnish.  I did that even though it took an extra day and a half to complete the work.  Wouldn't you know that the gel medium that remained tacky last time dried perfectly this time.  I had a hard time convincing myself that I should go the extra mile and add that last coat of varnish so everything would match.  In the end I did add the last coat of varnish, with my fingers crossed.  Fortunately, everything was okay this time.

This morning, before blogging, I glued the black cross braces on and took some pictures.  I will have to wait until the glue dries before I flip the pieces over and glue on the orange pieces.  Hopefully, next time I blog I will have the tower assembled and be working on the anthropomorphic pumpkin man.

Another Halloween Folk Art Witch

This folk art witch is made from the same pattern as the witches from last Sunday's blog post.  The dolls are also soft sculpted and pained with craft paints in the same manner as the previous dolls.  There are some differences in how I made the hair.  I used a commercially available curly doll hair and made a wig which was sewn on.  The doll was made in 2001.  Over the years the curls have relaxed and the hair is much longer now than it was when I made the doll.

The doll's dress and hat are black velveteen.  The dress waist, hem, and hat brim are trimmed with black grosgrain ribbon and embellished with silver star sequins.  The hat is also covered with the star sequins. She is also wearing black pantaloons.

When I first made this doll, she hung from a piece of black yarn attached to her hat.  The room she was hanging in had dark paneling.  The black yarn disappeared against the paneling and it appeared that the witch was flying unsupported.  It gave people quite a start.  Some years later, I displayed some of my Halloween figures in a library and needed some other support for the display cabinet.  A piece of wood is bolted around the broom underneath her dress.  The end of that piece of wood sits in a piece of copper pipe which fits into a hole drilled in a piece of finished wood.  Now I don't need something to hang the witch on to display her.

Faux Halloween Tesla Coil Project-Part 6

Beginnings of the pumpkin body.

I’ve completed a good deal of work on the project in the past few days, but at this point it is not very exciting.  I created the cross braces for the scaffolding of the tower.  The cross braces were created in the same way as the long pieces.  (An earlier blog post has pictures of the long pieces.)  They are pieces of craft stick covered in paper maché.  At this point, I have not taken any pictures because a stick covered with newsprint is not really very exciting.  It took extra time for them to dry because of the rainy weather we have had here.  I hope to get a coat of gesso on them today and maybe get some of them painted orange or black.  I doubt I'll get much more than that done today.

While I had some extra time, I started working on the body of the anthropomorphic pumpkin figure.  I am planning that the pumpkin torso will be an elongated pumpkin shape and that the head will be a rounder pumpkin shape.  The photo above shows the beginnings of the torso of the figure.  I created the base of the figure out of aluminum foil pressed into a tightly into a more or less pear shape.  The aluminum foil is covered with a layer of masking tape.  To create the ridged shape of a pumpkin, I taped on layers of newsprint.  This will eventually be covered with masking tape and then layers of strip paper maché.  The gaps between the layers of newsprint seem wide at this point, but they will fill in with paper maché and not be as pronounced.  The head will be created in the same manner.

It feels like this project is taking a long time, but it is actually progressing quite well.  This project has many components that need to be created before the diorama can be assembled.  Once the cross braces are painted and glue together the diorama will start to take shape fairly quickly.  My projects are not projects that are completed in a day or a week.  The time that is put into a piece is what separates folk art from being a craft project.  I wish I had started the project a little sooner, but there are a lot of demands on my time.  I do what I can when I can. 

Halloween Witches

One of my Halloween traditions is that I decorate for Halloween on October 1st. I enjoy having my Halloween decorations out for a month.  For the first week or so I move the pieces around until I find the settings that I like the best.  Over the years I have collected many interesting pieces.  I also make many of my own Halloween decorations. 

The pictures on this blog post are of two of the witches I made many years ago when I was just getting interested in making dolls.  The dark haired doll was made in 2002 and the white haired doll sitting on the crescent moon was made in 2003.  The crescent moon is made from paper maché and painted with pearlized paints.

The dolls are basic doll patterns made from unbleached muslin and striped cloth for the legs.  The arms and legs are "jointed" by sewing across the joint area to allow them to bend.  Once the dolls were stuffed the faces were soft sculpted.  These were some of my earliest dolls.  (Their noses are oversized on the face because I had not yet learned how to create a face with normal proportions.)  Once the soft sculpting was completed the doll was painted with flesh colored craft paint and the eyes and mouth were painted.  The hair is rooted yarn on the white haired doll.  Each strand is rooted separately.  The dark haired doll's hair is glued on.  It has held up well over the years, but I prefer to tie off the strands individually.  For all their faults, they have a lot of personality. 

The witch sitting on the pig is a representation of an old world myth about Halloween.  Many old Halloween stories used to say that witches and spirits used to come out on Halloween eve and ride the animals.  Needless to say, the animals were supposed to be rather stressed out  from this.  My folk art pig seems to be taking it in stride. 

Since I have all of my Halloween things out right now, I'll be showing photos of some of my Halloween creations over the next few weeks.  I guess about every other post will be photos of things that have already been made and the alternate post will be about the Faux Tesla Coil Halloween Project.  That way readers will be able to keep up with what is going on with that project as well.

Faux Tesla Coil Halloween Project Part 5 (The Comedy Episode)

Sometime things don't go as you would like on a project.  When that happens you can get frustrated and angry or you can laugh.  This is one of those times that I choose to laugh.  If I had been watching someone doing this on a comedy show, I would have been laughing so hard I could not breathe.

I drilled the holes in the spheres to have places to insert my electrical bolts.  For the most part, that went well.  The glass globes are covered with a thick layer of paper clay, and covered with layers of strip paper maché so there would be a firm foundation for the electrical bolts.  The bolts fit well into the holes I had drilled. It was after that that the trouble started.

Tape holding some of the bolts in place.

The glue I was using to set the bolts has a slower drying time than I would have liked.  However, I was using that glue in order to give myself some adjustment time to position and reposition the bolts as necessary.  So I would slip one bolt in and it would stay.  I'd put the next bolt in and the first one would fall out.  I finally determined that I would have to use some tape to hold on the bolts while the glue set up.  I started using  low tack blue painters tape because I did not want the tape to pull paint off when I removed it.  So I'd get two or three bolts put in, and when I was adding another the paint released its grip and the bolts would fall out.  I'm wearing gloves to protect my hands from the glue.  (Trust me, gluing your hands together is no fun.) Then I had to tear more tape to add to the tape already on there.  Although the tape was not willing to stick to the paper maché it was more than willing to stick to the gloves.  I was having difficulty getting the tape off the gloves.  I did not want to remove the gloves because they had glue on them, which was by now quite tacky.  I added more tape to what was already on the sphere.  More bolts fell off.  I determined I needed to use a stronger tape so I went for some heavier duty masking tape.  This means I will probably have to do some touch up painting.  

In the mean time, my hair clip slid, and now my hair was hanging in my face while I am trying to glue these things.  I really had to resist the temptation to push my hair out of the way because I did not want to get the glue and tape stuck in my hair.  It is a really high humidity day and even this tape was giving me some grief, but with enough of it I finally got the bolts to stick in place.  However, not all the bolts are glued in yet because the tape is covering up the holes.  I'm giving the glue 24 hours to dry before I tackle the rest of the bolts.

This whole episode was a comic as an I Love Lucy show.  Like I said, if I had been watching someone else with this I would have been howling with laughter.  I did get something done on the project and that is what really counts.  Tomorrow I will be better prepared to deal with the situation.