Done with my secret santa gift!
I started this about oh... a month, month and a half ago. I didn't do any work on the project while Bogdan was visiting the week of thanksgiving, but at that point I was up to doing all fiddly little sewing and gluing stuff, which I don't like to do. But it had to be done!!
When I got the Creepy Cute Crochet book earlier this year (when I didn't know how to crochet :p) I saw that two of the critters in the book were a corporate zombie, and a cyber zombie. So I thought to myself "OMG I NEED to make an army of zombies for my Ars Secret Santa recipient this year!" I have to admit, I was a little bummed out that the person I got wasn't someone who'd posted at length about their love affair with the undead. But who wouldn't love an army of zombies, right? So I made for him 4 corporate zombies in an assortment of colors, and two cyber zombies. I crocheted one of them much tighter than the other so it's a wee cyber zombie.
Pics! (You can click on the smaller ones for bigger)
One of my corporate zombies ended up with blondish hair. Once they were almost done I started assigning names/personalities to them. I couldn't quite think of what to do with this one, until Kané said I should splash some red paint blood on it, give it a cricket bat, and call it a Shaun zombie. Brilliant idea! So I made it a bat out of polyclay. Shaun played with his zombie friend too much and caught teh zombie bug. Now Shaun, a smart tool using zombie, walks around with his cricket bat bashing people on the head and feasting on their BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAINS!
As much as I love the cricket bat I made, and the idea of a Shaun zombie, my favorite of the bunch has to be zombie Einstein. It wasn't anything when I was making it, but once I sewed the dense mass of gray hair on it it was the best name for it, especially after one day when I was headbanging it (that yarn hair moves awesomely for headbanging, lol) and said "E equals M C BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAINS!"
Then there's poor emo zombie. I put too little hair on it (t was the second batch of hair I made and I was still getting used to how to do it), and its eye is falling out of its head. I'd decided while I was still crocheting the bodies that I had to have at least one zombie with its eye falling out, hehe. Note the different color yarn holding the eye in place... as if it had vessels and nerves and stuff. With more hair I could've given it a more emo hair cut, but honestly I didn't feel like taking off the hair, making more, and sewing it on again. Sewing on the hair is super fiddly and kind of annoying to do. So I decided it's good enough :P Because of this, emo zombie cuts itself for your BRAAAAAAAAAAINS :D
Medusa zombie got its hair first. I figured a mess of green hair on top of a dark mottled yarn face would truly show how old and decomposed this zombie is. I had some green yarn I had knitted as practice for something a while back. I unwound the work, made the hair and... oh look at that, the hair's all curly and stands up! Awesome. So Medusa zombie got her name. Don't be fooled by the collared shirt and tie, it's still a gorgon zombie :p
For variety's sake I made two cyber zombies. It's a little harder to make them look different so I made one small and one big, and changed the wire details some. Out of the two the baby cyber zombie's the one I like better. Since it's small, I decided it needed a red laser eye OF DOOM hehe.
And the big cyber zombie. Since this one was crocheted looser I could stick the phone wires in and sort of connect its arm to its head. I didn't want to cut up the arm like the instructions said because I didn't want the whole arm to fray apart, because holy crap making those arms sucked! But it was worth dealing with the fiddlyness for sure.
And of course I had to take a group shot
Then when Kané got home I took a series of pictures of him being swarmed by the zombies, which ends in this pic that amuses me greatly :D
It's a good thing he has a big head to accomodate all those hungry zombies :D
I'm really happy with how the zombies came out, and that I didn't give up like halfway through the project and say "fuck it, 3 zombies are as good as 6" :D Though the way I was making them made it harder to give up partway, since I did them in stages (all the bodies, all the sewing together of the bodies, all the hair, all the blood, the shirt collars, the ties, the eyes, and finally sewing on the blood and the mouths). But yes, happy and proud. They're not perfect, but I think they came out fairly well. Their imperfection can be blamed on their being decomposed :p I quite like how they slowly came to be able to be given personalities, and all by chance. I bet if I would've said "I want to make an Einstein zombie! And a Medusa zombie! And a Shaun zombie!" it wouldn't have come out nearly as well.
I have a super cheesy letter go to along with them, a biohazard symbol to tape to the box, put that with the chew toys I got for the recipient's dogs in a bigger box (never ever mail a box with a biohazard symbol on the outside unless you want to pay a hell of a lot of money and fill out a ton of paperwork!), and make him brownies. I think overall it's the best Secret Santa gift I'll be sending out in the 5 years I've been participating.
When I got the Creepy Cute Crochet book earlier this year (when I didn't know how to crochet :p) I saw that two of the critters in the book were a corporate zombie, and a cyber zombie. So I thought to myself "OMG I NEED to make an army of zombies for my Ars Secret Santa recipient this year!" I have to admit, I was a little bummed out that the person I got wasn't someone who'd posted at length about their love affair with the undead. But who wouldn't love an army of zombies, right? So I made for him 4 corporate zombies in an assortment of colors, and two cyber zombies. I crocheted one of them much tighter than the other so it's a wee cyber zombie.
Pics! (You can click on the smaller ones for bigger)
One of my corporate zombies ended up with blondish hair. Once they were almost done I started assigning names/personalities to them. I couldn't quite think of what to do with this one, until Kané said I should splash some red paint blood on it, give it a cricket bat, and call it a Shaun zombie. Brilliant idea! So I made it a bat out of polyclay. Shaun played with his zombie friend too much and caught teh zombie bug. Now Shaun, a smart tool using zombie, walks around with his cricket bat bashing people on the head and feasting on their BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAINS!
As much as I love the cricket bat I made, and the idea of a Shaun zombie, my favorite of the bunch has to be zombie Einstein. It wasn't anything when I was making it, but once I sewed the dense mass of gray hair on it it was the best name for it, especially after one day when I was headbanging it (that yarn hair moves awesomely for headbanging, lol) and said "E equals M C BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAINS!"
Then there's poor emo zombie. I put too little hair on it (t was the second batch of hair I made and I was still getting used to how to do it), and its eye is falling out of its head. I'd decided while I was still crocheting the bodies that I had to have at least one zombie with its eye falling out, hehe. Note the different color yarn holding the eye in place... as if it had vessels and nerves and stuff. With more hair I could've given it a more emo hair cut, but honestly I didn't feel like taking off the hair, making more, and sewing it on again. Sewing on the hair is super fiddly and kind of annoying to do. So I decided it's good enough :P Because of this, emo zombie cuts itself for your BRAAAAAAAAAAINS :D
Medusa zombie got its hair first. I figured a mess of green hair on top of a dark mottled yarn face would truly show how old and decomposed this zombie is. I had some green yarn I had knitted as practice for something a while back. I unwound the work, made the hair and... oh look at that, the hair's all curly and stands up! Awesome. So Medusa zombie got her name. Don't be fooled by the collared shirt and tie, it's still a gorgon zombie :p
For variety's sake I made two cyber zombies. It's a little harder to make them look different so I made one small and one big, and changed the wire details some. Out of the two the baby cyber zombie's the one I like better. Since it's small, I decided it needed a red laser eye OF DOOM hehe.
And the big cyber zombie. Since this one was crocheted looser I could stick the phone wires in and sort of connect its arm to its head. I didn't want to cut up the arm like the instructions said because I didn't want the whole arm to fray apart, because holy crap making those arms sucked! But it was worth dealing with the fiddlyness for sure.
And of course I had to take a group shot
Then when Kané got home I took a series of pictures of him being swarmed by the zombies, which ends in this pic that amuses me greatly :D
It's a good thing he has a big head to accomodate all those hungry zombies :D
I'm really happy with how the zombies came out, and that I didn't give up like halfway through the project and say "fuck it, 3 zombies are as good as 6" :D Though the way I was making them made it harder to give up partway, since I did them in stages (all the bodies, all the sewing together of the bodies, all the hair, all the blood, the shirt collars, the ties, the eyes, and finally sewing on the blood and the mouths). But yes, happy and proud. They're not perfect, but I think they came out fairly well. Their imperfection can be blamed on their being decomposed :p I quite like how they slowly came to be able to be given personalities, and all by chance. I bet if I would've said "I want to make an Einstein zombie! And a Medusa zombie! And a Shaun zombie!" it wouldn't have come out nearly as well.
I have a super cheesy letter go to along with them, a biohazard symbol to tape to the box, put that with the chew toys I got for the recipient's dogs in a bigger box (never ever mail a box with a biohazard symbol on the outside unless you want to pay a hell of a lot of money and fill out a ton of paperwork!), and make him brownies. I think overall it's the best Secret Santa gift I'll be sending out in the 5 years I've been participating.