Lid It Up

Every time I glance passively in the mirror, I give myself the most flirtatious look completely by accident. I don't know what it is, but everything about my expression will be so perfectly balanced and brimming with such joy and confidence that I... Well, I think I may have fallen in love with my reflection.

I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that I can sing, but only when nobody else is there. I mean, I think I can sing really well, but as soon as there is somebody within earshot my breathing messes up and all of the lovely stops coming out. Which is a shame, because I think I could come out with an album and make money. I'd just never be able to do live shows... Or record with anyone listening.

My register must be low for a girl, or something, because I find myself singing low notes the best. But I can still sing high, don't get me wrong. I'm a lady, it's what I do. I can't sing very many pop or rock songs, though. I'd be pretty useless in a band unless it was a jazzy sort of band. Because that's what I can sing the best, jazzy sorts of music. Jazzy and lounge stuff and things that are usually better suited to a man. But I sound great singin' it anyways.

Man, it's hard to believe I have about a month of summer break left. Hard to believe because it feels like school got out forever ago! Holy cow, this is a long break! I'm used to two and a half piddly months of summer break that start the week it rains the most. I still haven't finished cleaning my room, though. I pretty much took July off. But I am starting to get the urge to get rid of everything I own again. What I want to do is get rid of all of the things underneath and next to my bed, and then I can push my bed against the wall. And finally, I will have something to rest my back against when I watch TV! It will be great. It's also more or less the last big place I have to clean before I deal with the small piles.

Product Facts

Last night, around midnight, I had this sudden urge to draw in pen until my hand fell off. But I didn't want to draw in my tiny sketchbook, or on a loose piece of paper like I have been for the past few years. So I broke out the last sketchpad I ever used, wrote in the date and went at it. The night ended when I drew on my leg and I guess my skin oils blocked up my pens.

I then had a dream that I drew a picture, and someone else sent it off to an Automatic Inker, which turned out to be a computer that guesses where your lines are and tries to ink your drawings for you. It was horribly inaccurate and ruined my lovely picture. I woke up angry.

Today I went out and bought a couple new sketchpads. I'm horribly picky about these things. I want heavy paper, spiral binding on the top, perforated pages, and a lot of pages. It also has to be around 9x11 inches, but I'm a bit loose with the numbers there. I got mostly what I wanted, except medium heavy pages and there are only 24 of them. The best sketchpad I ever had I bought at a Kinokuniya's. It had pages as thick as bristol board, and there were at least 50 of them. So lovely!

I'm stressing paper thickness because I want to use a lot of pens and ink, and I don't want them leaking through. I decided that I'm too fiddly with pencils, and I need to just belch it out with pens. Then I can't take back anything I draw. This made everything I drew last night look completely horrible. But the sharp contrast between paper and ink is too delicious for me to stop trying.

I want to draw full page comics again, but that's not going to happen until I can get my art style under control. You need to be able to plan if you're going to draw a comic, and as it is right now, I don't know what I'm drawing until an hour after I've finished it.

Stars On Your Toes

I have rodents on the brain.

My parents have two girl cats that love to hunt. When I lock them in at night (which is prime time hunting) so that they don't become coyote food, they verbally abuse me. Being yelled at for a solid hour by the tiniest and angriest cat you've ever seen is a lot less adorable than you'd think it would be.

They're also very good hunters. On average, I'd say they catch 1.5 critters a day. Some days we get no animals at all, other days there will be three or four little rodents awaiting our approval. They always bring their catch inside, but I haven't figured out why yet. At first we thought they were bringing us presents, but they've stopped announcing it every time they bring something in. Then we thought they might be bringing them into an enclosed space so that they don't escape, but there are so many places for the little animals to hide. All a mouse has to do to be free is hide behind the piano for an our or two, and the cat will forget they even brought it inside.

Live mice and shrews are fun but tedious, because they need to be caught and released before they poop anywhere. Live birds are exciting and terrifying because they fly all over the place, but they don't last long because they fly into windows. Live moles are pure horror, unless they're just babies. Dead everythings are probably my favorite, because I can just pick them up and throw them out, and sometimes the cat will even take them out themselves because they want to play with it still. Dead birds are a pain because they leave feathers all over the place, and the cats will fight over them like dogs playing tug of war. Half-dead everythings are sad, because they are too alive to throw out and too dead to release outside. Either I or the cat has to kill it all the way.

The worst so far, though, are live field mice and rats. They're too big and scary for me to catch in a little box. And rats are really smart, so they escape very easily (and they can also jump at you!).

One of the cats brought a rat in yesterday. I thought at first it was just another field mouse, which meant it would be a pain and poop and eat, but it would be too afraid to confront us. But then I saw it in all of its glory today, eating the cat food. Definitely a rat. And it lives under the fridge, which currently reeks because of what is probably a dead field mouse. It's not afraid of me, and it pokes its head out a lot to watch me, and isn't afraid to come out even if I'm only 15 feet away.

I put Stormy by the fridge and then started waving a yard stick underneath to try to flush it out and have the cat catch it, but the smell was so horrible that I could only crouch there for a minute or two. It doesn't smell like dead things or even animal droppings, but it is still very putrid.

I refuse to go downstairs unless I put on my heavy winter boots. I don't want it biting me or running up my pant leg.

I hate rats.

Bliff

Here are some finished pictures of that mask I toiled over for so long.


I actually didn't notice how much the details on the mask were crooked until I look at this picture. But it's waaay too late to fix anything.

I ended up gluing the strap down with white glue to the inside of the mask, and then taping it down to the extreme. I also drilled holes into the sides to pull the straps through. They only just fit through the holes. In fact, before I glued everything down, I was pulling on the straps to see how much force it would take to get them to loosen, and the mask flexed before the strings slipped even a little bit.


I used a glossy waterproof coat, on request of Griffin. He says the mask is shiny in the art, so it should be shiny in real life. I kind of like the glossy coat, it makes it look a bit more professional.

If I were to do this again, I would cut the edges and the eyes out while it was still wet, but dry enough to not be tacky anymore. Then I'd be able to get nice and smooth edges with minimal trouble.



I glued the felt in with watered down white glue. At that point I didn't even care if it stuck in well. So long as nobody pulled on it, it stayed in well enough.

You can also see that I didn't put very much effort into making the thickness consistent. Around the ears it must have been over an inch thick, but some places around the snout were so thin you could see the light shine through them. It was still absurdly strong.

I like how the eyes turned out. They're far from perfect, but I expected them to be absolutely terrible and ruin everything. They were a success, and perfectly functional. You can kinda see the black cloth I used behind the eyes in this picture. Even close up, it blended in very well. I have a lot of that stuff left, maybe I'll make about a hundred more masks like this to try to use it up.


Here we are, two attractive people dressed up as two attractive yet conservative people. The mask photographed well, I don't know what I was so worried about. He was able to tie the mask on without problem, but it would take forever and then he would put his hand on it anyways for photos, so he started to just hold it on.

I also want to point out that the vest and skirt I am wearing are the first two things I have ever sewn by myself. Everyone says they turned out well. Hooray!

It took on some damage after traveling to the other side of the country and being carried around a crowded convention, but it still looks lovely. There is a small paint chip on the very tip of one of the ears, and a mysterious dark fingerprint on the other ear. Griffin and I were using a lot of dark fabric paint on his costume, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was that paint that stained the mask. It's hardly noticeable, though.

I don't know if I've even mentioned this yet! The recipe I used for the clay for the mask is based off the one on Ultimate Paper Mache, for Paper Mache Clay. I say "based off" because I am really bad at following recipes, and I ended up with something similar but very very different.

I'm playing Assassin's Creed 2. In case you didn't know that already. I'm doing a mission right now where I have to deliver a letter. I pressed select to look at the map, but instead got to read the letter. It's telling the receiver that he is in trouble and should turn himself in. At one part in the letter, it says "If you are not aware of the charges against you, read Leviticus 18:23." So I thought I would break out my trusty Bible and find out what this guy did wrong! (Other than attack people with his sword.) Leviticus 18:23 says:

Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion.

Oh, AC2!

And on that bombshell, I leave you.

Right Now

Man, I have been so busy doing nothing all day that I have completely forgotten to update Ubiquity! But that is mostly because I update Ubiquity at night, and my nights have been so busy. It's like I sit around all day, waiting for nothing, and then all of a sudden it gets dark outside and I go "Yeah! Let's get to work!" and then start doing things.

I finished that mask. Forever ago. I'll post final pictures of it next time, I promise, along with a picture of Griffin wearing it in costume.

I have decided that I will start up an Etsy shop. I am always making things, but there have been a lot of projects I put off because I don't know what I'd do with them once I finish them. But now, I think I will sell them! I will sell them for real money to (hopefully) real people. So I have been spending a lot of time making things to sell in the shop. I have nothing listed yet. I want three to five items finished before I list anything, so that my shop doesn't look super sad. Right now, I have one item 100% completed, one in the works, and about fifty other ideas of things to make that people might like to buy.

The item I'm making right now are, essentially, fingerless gloves. I am putting a lot of stress into the way these gloves feel. They have to be super soft. I could crochet them in a day or two, but crocheted fabric is bumpy and kinda rough. So I thought I would try my hand at knitting again. It would take one or two weeks just for me to knit two gloves, but they would be smooth and soft and wonderful. I even bought a special yarn that is particularly soft, and also thinner than my usual yarn, just for this project. Knitting was going very well, much better than last time by far, until it came time to increase stitches. I couldn't remember how, so I Googled it. The technique I used did not work at all. It left huge holes in the fabric and made the stitches all loose or tangled--It was a terrible mess!

So I tried to undo it back to the part that was nice, but... Well, that is why I don't knit. I'm very slow, and I make a lot of mistakes. When I try to fix a mistake I end up tearing the whole piece apart. All these hours of gorgeous work, gone! Now I'm attempting to crochet them. I'm using a very tiny hook in the hopes that a tighter knit will produce a smoother fabric. But I suppose to get a truly smooth fabric, I have to find the right balance between tightness and thickness of yarn (there's a That's What She Said in there). I wonder if anybody has done research on that.

It probably isn't good that I am staying up this late, I have someplace to be tomorrow afternoon.

Shivering Blimps

Today we have a very picture intensive post as I practically give a step-by-step how-to guide of this mask I am making. I've been taking lot of pictures along the way, pretty much because I live my life as if it were a how-to guide.

Here goes!
(It's cool because everything was uploaded in the opposite order I wanted.)

Light behind the mask to show the cut out eyes.

I took that dremel tool to the mask and cut out the eyes. It was hard work, and actually kind of scary. Almost right away I lost control of the tool a bit and nicked the side of the eye on the right. It seemed like after that, nothing would cut as smoothly as I wanted it to. The eyes turned out quite a bit shorter than I wanted them to, since the dremel couldn't make holes small enough to reach the very edges of the design. I think it still looks pretty great.

Close-up of my handy work, showing the nicked eye and mask thickness.

I decided that I wanted to paint the inside edges of the eye holes black to reduce any glare on the wearer. Doing that turned out to be an awesome idea aesthetically, because it made it seem like there was no edge to the eyes. They were just black shapes on the mask, but with an eery feeling of depth...

Tape around the front of the eyes, ready for painting.

I put tape on the front of the mask over the holes to make sure I wouldn't accidentally paint over the edge. It worked really well, but any little nicks or chips I caused with the dremel got filled in a little bit with black paint. It was nothing too serious, though.

Detail of the opposite side of the mask, with freshly painted eyes and tape still applied.

In that last picture there are a lot of deep crags in the mask. That's because I covered my mask form with plastic wrap to make sure it would pop out without problems. You can also clearly see the yellow spots that plague my mask. Next time I'll use the right kind of flour.

The otherworldly abyss of the keaton's gaze.

I hadn't marked where I would paint the ears yet, so I did that after I painted the eyes. I love this clay material because it is mostly just paper. I can use a pencil to draw on it no problem, and so long as the area is smooth it will erase pretty well. I just have to be careful not to touch the pencil markings, because it will smudge off.

First coating of yellow paint.

I put very little effort into staying inside the lines when I painted the very first layer of yellow. I knew it would go on thin enough that I could still see my pencil underneath, and that the black paint would easily cover its color. Unfortunately, the paint was also thin enough that you could still see the yellow spots underneath. I ended up with 2 and a half coatings of yellow paint. The third coat I just kind of put paint wherever I thought the spots still stood out without any regard as to whether the paint had dried there yet or not.

Black parts all painted.

The black was fun to paint with because it went on with such a solid color, but that also meant I had to be really careful to make nice edges. If there's one thing I learned from painting the garage however many summers ago, it's that a wet brush will make the sharpest lines. If there isn't enough paint on your brush, your edges will get thready, and your lines will be wobbly as a result. A steady hand was important to make good lines and edges on this mask, because I couldn't use painter's tape. The surface had far too many imperfections.

Black cloth stretched and taped over the eyes.

When you put the mask on and breath, all of the air comes rushing in through the eye holes and right into your eyes. I found that out shortly after cutting out the eyes and I sucked an nice big cloud of mask dust right into my eyes. I also didn't want the flashes of any cameras going off and illuminating the face behind the mask, ruining the illusion of painted-on eyes. So I put a black material behind the eye holes to catch most of the wind and block most of a camera's flash. The material is really opaque, but very stretchy. If you stretch it tightly both ways, you can see through it well enough to read the expression on a person's face, but text messages and digital clocks are a different matter.

Felt lining in place.

I spent a lot of time cutting out pieces of black felt and getting it to fit snugly inside the mask. Then I used a felting needle to make it one nice, big, form-fitted piece of felt. It fits pretty well, except I couldn't get it to go all the way into the deep nose. It'll be fine, so long as nobody tries to punch a finger through it. It won't be a big deal if they do, though. I'll just be irritated because it was a lot of work.. I also made sure to cut out eye-holes in the felt. Those were seriously last second, I forgot that sometimes people need to see.

I haven't glued the felt in yet, which is a really good thing because I have just now realized that I haven't sealed it yet. I'll want to do that soon, because the felt will collect moisture from your breath, and then hold it against the mask for a long period of time. That might make all of my handy work mushy and terrible. I'll have to take the black cloth out, though. What a pain, it was difficult to get in there, what with the stretching and the taping.

I need to figure out a way to attach the strap. I decided on this nice length of black suede I've got, which goes nicely with the theme of black I have going on inside the mask. What I want to do is glue it so that it runs as a band along the inside of the mask, just above the eyes, but I can't find a glue strong enough that will be safe to breath. What I don't want to do it drill holes, because that will mean that I have to make ugly knots on either side of the mask with the strap. There isn't enough room inside to hide the knots, so they would have to go on the outside.

What I think I will end up doing is taping the strap down nice and firmly where I want it along the inside, maybe with some white glue underneath, and then drill holes and thread it through there. I'll loop the strap through the holes a second time, to give reinforcement and prevent it from getting so tight that the tape lifts out. If that gives me trouble, then I can just pull the strap out and do the big ugly knot thing.

Alright! I am almost done. Just a little bit left to go!

Strange Settings

You can see how much the ears have improved in this picture, compared to the last one. That's from all the "filling" I did. Unfortunately, I think I might have ruined the perfection of the face part a bit trying to fill it all. Oh, well, I am done fussing so much over smoothness. I'll just have to apply a thick layer of paint, I guess.

I can safely say that the clay has completely dried by now. I thought it was dry a couple days ago, when I took the form out of the back. But I have since learned and grown as a person. Back then, I was afraid to lift it by the ears. Now, I think I could swing it around by the ears and use it to kill zombies and it won't so much as chip. This clay has dried to be really, ridiculously hard. I talked to my dad about it a bit today, after using a really pathetic and weak grinding tool I have to determine some eye holes. All he could do was say "Drywall is really hard. Drywall is hard." and then pull out his proper grinding tools and show me how to use them, so my work might go a little easier.

I think they are called dremel tools, actually. Not grinding tools.

Griffin more or less requested that I make it possible to see through the mask, and I told him I'd see what I could do, but no promises. And that's exactly how I went about determining eye holes--No promises. I first made a sort of bad attempt and figuring out where my eye are on the back of the mask. I marked it with X's, and then drilled part way through the mask on top of those X's. This way I could shine a light through the holes in the back of the mask, and the front would glow in those spots, but there would be no actual markings on the front. Then I marked on the front of the mask where I wanted the eye holes to go, using the glowing spots as guides. You see, earlier I wasn't sure if my eyes would in any way line up with the eyes on the front of the mask. I thought the mask sat too high on the face to do that. But the spots I marked are at just about the thickest part of the mask's eyes, so everything worked out perfectly. It just won't offer a very wide field of vision, or a very clear one for that matter. So I wouldn't suggest wearing this while driving, or crossing traffic, or while standing in a place crowded with people whose eyes are at the same level as the tips of the ears.

Tomorrow I want to even out the design of the eyes a little more, and then use the dremel to cut them. Then I will use the dremel to smooth and even out the edges of the mask, to give it a really nice and professional (and not absolutely shoddy) look to it. Sand it, paint it, waterproof it, line it, strap it, done. Oh, I guess I'll also have to drill holes for the strap. I guess it's time to get that part figured out.

I'll tie a strap around it tomorrow and see if I can whip my face about without it sliding off. Your face goes really deep into it, so I'm not too worried about balance and things like that. Just a way to make the strap nice and tight and still be comfortable. Maybe a ribbon. Maybe elastic attached to a leather belt-like thing, like my monogoggle. Maybe just a thin leather strap that you tie, because I have a lot of that lying around. Maybe Velcro. So many choices!

Okay, maybe not Velcro.