It’s been a crafty weekend here in Coventry
My new bottle cutting rig. This thing works like a charm.
That’s a lot of pony hair.
My new airbrush is *sweet*.
This quartet of ponies is for a commission I’m working on at the moment.
','caption', 'My fantastic husband' );">Eddie bought me a tile saw for Christmas to make it easier to cut the tops off the bottles, and since it was actually nice out this weekend I finally got a chance to give it a try. We set up the rig on top of the picnic table in the backyard, filled its basin with water, and tried it out. I tried to cut an empty Everclear bottle, but was still a little nervous about it. ','caption', 'My fantastic husband' );">Eddie stepped in an gave it a shot, which helped out because I could see how it was working, and then I did the rest of them. He took off to go to the store, while I managed to cut the tops off a bunch of bottles, resulting in
- 1 Svedka cherry vodka tumbler
- 1 Skyy vodka vase
- 2 Hennessy flask vases
- 2 or 3 Coke bottle vases
- 1 Jack Daniels vase
The next time we have a really nice, warm day, I’ll be able to sit in the driveway and grind down the edges. Even at about 50°F, it’s still a little bit too chilly to be sitting on the ground. I think I managed to cut everything in about 20 minutes - easily a third of the time it would have taken me to score and candle the same number bottles using my old method - while ','caption', 'My fantastic husband' );">Eddie went off to the store to get me a plastic tote for the next craft project: airbrushing the ponies.
I’ve wanted an airbrush for a couple of weeks now. While it is entirely possible to repaint a pony’s body with a brush and some acrylic paints, or to dye them, both methods are time consuming. When dying the bodies, they can’t be worked with for a while because the dye needs to set and can bleed out. It’s also unpredictable; dye can set unevenly and look spotty, or the head may not match the body. Painting with a brush is a long process of many thin layers of paint in an effort to try and avoid streaks and brush strokes, and sometimes it seems like the plastic bodies just want to repel all of the paint. With the airbrush though, the bodies don’t get streaky brush strokes, I won’t need to do as many layers of paint, and I can do funky gradient effects with the paint. The current batch of ponies are a combination of the two, since I hand painted their bodies and airbrushed their legs later.
I started to give them eyes last night, and once everyone’s heads are all painted I’ll give them a good seal and work on their cutie marks. Once that’s all done, I’ll get to do my least favorite part: the hair. The frustration of doing that will probably result in a post all its own.
