Thing I Made Thursday #5: Deceased fairy gaff!
As you have probably guessed from the last entry, this week's Thing I Made Thursday is my dead fairy gaff.
If you have not read the story, please go do so! In all its beautiful, digressive glory, it's as much a part of the thing as the shriveled organs and tattered wings!
First, thanks go to Jenna at Shadow Manor for the awesome dead fairy doom-it-yourself prop tutorial! Much of this came from there, and the rest came from reading about people customizing larger skeletons for Halloween. Googling stuff like Halloween, Bucky, skeleton, how-to, latex, etc., will get you to any number of really good tutorials. Make sure you put in "Bucky," BTW. That's just what everyone calls cheap skeleton reproductions. A Bucky.
Anyway.
I actually made this a little over a year ago, but it has proven damnably hard to photograph, and, too, I have only just received the final story from our favorite retrocognitive psychometrist detailing its origin. The weasel was VERY late. Ahem.
How she managed to avoid making a "handy shandy" joke is anyone's guess.
It took me about a week and a half of fiddling with it for a while every evening to do this. I tore everything up and started over after about three days, by the way. The wings were done over two evenings, since I let the transparencies dry overnight.
Let me tell you, he was a lot of work! I learned a lot making him, and expect my second effort will be much better.
If you want to see more of this gruesome little gaff, please click below the cut!
I used a cheap skeleton I got at Target over Halloween for, like, two dollars. I heated it in hot water and bent it around to look more natural.
The skin is colored latex. Buy latex carpet glue at the hardware store. It will be with the flooring adhesives. It is sold in largeish plastic bottles and you will know you have the right stuff if it REEKS of ammonia. It is real latex, pure, and you can tint it with plain old craft store paint.
Latex sticks to itself like nobody's business. I brushed a thin coat of slightly brownish-tinted latex over the bones.
I made organs by tinting latex puddles, then rolling the dry latex into the shapes I wanted. Long, thin streaks of latex become entrails. A thicker, smaller puddle becomes the heart. You get the drift. It's not hard. These went into the body cavity in a roughly anatomical fashion, and were covered with a tinted layer of darker brown latex to kind of unify the colors and glue them in place.
I made "muscle" in much the same way, and lay here and there where I thought it would show through once I had the skin on. It's hard to see, so next time I will use more.
I made "skin" by tinting a puddle of it and then spreading it out into a thinner (not too thin, about the thickness of a pencil lead) puddle. Once dry it can be peeled up (carefully) and you can press it to the other latex and then draw it across the bones like skin. Once stretched, it can be punctured and cut and peeled up and so on, and the effect can be quite gruesomely real.
Other body parts can be sculpted from latex. I made the ears by snipping ear-shaped bits off of a very thick piece of dried latex "skin."
I think I'm being pretty brave showing you the back, where the wings attach. I used latex to smooth the transition and then dusted the area with interference blue paint. (If I had had them at the time, I would have used Pearl-Ex powders!) It works, but I'll try something else next time.
He came out looking more . . . juicy . . . than I had intended. I wanted a drier, more mummified look, and this guy is definitely more on the "Shh! The Maestro is decomposing!" end of the scale.
Some of that shininess is interference paint, most of it in shades of gold and blue. I reasoned that the living creatures' iridescence would not fade when they died, but would remain in whatever skin was still present.
He has realistic little organs in his abdominal cavity, all placed where they ought to go (based on what I remember from dissecting that pig in biology class).
His wings are definitely the best part. I made them (see below) and they were perfect, gorgeous, amazing. And I had to take those perfect, gorgeous, and amazing wings, and take a Dremel tool after them, because a semi-mummified fairy corpse does NOT look right next to a pair of perfect little fairy wings.
My favorite detail is the ear with the little earrings genuinely pierced through. I also love his drag queen makeup.
The eyes are pearlescent beads that fit the eyesockets perfectly. I put them in so that the holes wouldn't show, then covered them totally with latex, then cut eye slits and pushed the eyelids back to reveal the beads. I cleaned the beads of extra latex with the chewed tip of a toothpick. FANCY.
The hair I applied one fucking hair at a time, dipping the ends in latex and then applying them to the scalp.
I will not do it that way again. I will use contact cement or something that dries faster, and I will just brush the hair over the scalp and let the cement grab it.
The hair is surprisingly firmly rooted.
I covered the whole thing with a coat of flat sealer, after covering the hair with some paper towels (should have done the hair after the sealer).
Entrails! You're looking at a liver and some intestine. Also, under the tastefully-draped hair, is his man-tackle. I call attention to it not because I am proud to have sculpted a desiccated fairy penis, but because I don't want anyone staring and staring trying to figure out if that really is what it looks like. It is. I admit it. We can move on.
I created the ragged edge and the worn-through moth-eaten spots by putting the wings (not yet on the fairy) against a flattish stone surface and using a Dremel sanding tube thingy on it. It worked really, really well, and it was a LOT of fun, even though on some level I was SCREAMING because I was destroying something so pretty, and I didn't even know if it would work.
The wings are both translucent and iridescent, both of which are fiendishly hard to photograph.
Just a neat picture.
Real butterfly wings can get clear-ish spots when they have had all the scales rubbed off. So I think this look is pretty effective at conveying that. Also, the slight texturing of the printed image (more on that later) gives it the appearance of being covered in butterfly dust.
This is the display case I bought as raw wood and finished myself. It was a lot of goddamn work to get the inside the way I wanted it, and I am still not happy with it.
Still, it will get displayed like this because I really haven't figured out what else to do with it.
The BEST PART of the entire experience, so help me god, was taking the case AND the fairy in to Michael's framing department and picking out a matboard color I liked. People kept walking up and making these horrified faces and then moving to the other side of the framing area. The guy who was helping me thought it was awesome, though.
Okay, the wings. Quick and dirty.
The wings are two pieces of inkjet transparency film sandwiched over a layer of Fantasy Film. The Fantasy Film is a thin plastic tissue that is iridescent as hell, and it comes in many different colors. I believe this one is "waterfall" but don't quote me on that. Normally you have to order this stuff online. However, I found some stuff that is a LOT like it at the dollar store! It is sold as gift wrap tissue, and comes in LARGE sheets, two or four to a bag. I haven't tried using it in the same way I used the Fantasy Film, I don't know how well it would do the other stuff that Fantasy Film supposedly does, I'm just throwing this out there as a cheaper, easier to find alternative that MIGHT work. Worth trying, I just haven't tried yet.
I drew some butterfly wings on paper, scanned them, colored them in Photoshop, added some noise to the colored areas with the noise filter to give it a slightly grainy look, then mirrored and rearranged the image so that all four wings were on one page. I printed two of these.
I took the first set and sprayed it with high-quality spray adhesive (not the Aleene's stuff, the artist's stuff that's way more expensive, but also way thinner and way more transparent). I cut strips of Fantasy Film and lay it over the wings, making sure that I was laying it in the same direction along each wing, relative to the wing itself, so that the wings would match. Fantasy Film has a kind of streaky grain to it, so be conscious of that. Apply it from one edge with one hand and sort of rub and push it into place with the fingers of your other hand so that you aren't leaving air bubbles. Air bubbles can be pushed out toward the edges of the wings.
Here you can really see the iridescence.
When I had stuck the fantasy film to the first piece, I cut out the first and second set of wings VERY ROUGHLY, leaving a wide margin around each. I sprayed the second set with adhesive. Looking through the wings at the light, I aligned the edges as closely as I could and pressed them together. I lay them under a sheet of newsprint and burnished over them to set the glue and to push out any air bubbles.
Then I cut around the borders as closely as I could with a pair of very sharp scissors. If you are better with a craft knife, use that.
The wings were too flat. They needed veining. I found some stuff that is sold as craft foam glue that you can write and draw with as well. It's very soft and about the consistency of bottled acrylic paint, but holds its shape much better. I found a set of tiny bottles with tiny detachable tips, almost like syringes. I don't think I could have done this without those tiny tips. Find something similar if you can. I filled the bottles with the black foam glue and drew the veins on. Work top to bottom, side to side, and be careful not to smear it. Clean up small mistakes with damp cotton swabs. Dried mistakes can be scraped or trimmed away with a craft knife. It dries pretty quickly. Do one side, turn them over and do the other. Then do the edges, around the outside of the wing. Put it on top of something like a couple of pop bottle caps that will keep the wet edges off the table while it dries.
Up close, I didn't get them aligned perfectly, and in a couple of places, I put the veins on one side of the wing in a different place. These are tiny details that were mostly destroyed when I Dremeled the fuck out of these bitches.
Oh, and when you Dremel them, or use a sanding block, or whatever, WEAR A MASK and EYE PROTECTION and DO IT OUTSIDE. SERIOUSLY. I AM NOT KIDDING. And wear clothes you won't mind washing right away. You will get plastic dust EVERYWHERE. Also, it stiiinks.
When I'd done that, I took the tattered wings and used a clicker lighter -- NOT a candle; candles leave black soot on everything, use something that burns cleanly! -- held way, way under the wings to sort of warp some areas, and clean up some of the tattered edges. The plastic, when heated, pulls together into a smoother edge. Hold the wing way above the flame and lower it down slowly, don't just click the lighter under the wing and let 'er rip.
When that was done, I coated one side of the wings with gloss sealer (the outside, visible from the rear) and the other with a flat sealer (the inside, visible from the front). Butterfly wings are duller on one side, after all.
Then I attached them.
I think the biggest problem is that I used a crappy base skeleton. It looks good, but the hands and feet look fake, and there was only so much I could do to change that. I have bought two Petite Pete skeletons from the Anatomical Chat Company (I used their Amazon storefront but you don't have to). I will use those next time and probably get a better effect.
Dear lord, this was a lot of work. *pant pant pant*
I hope you enjoyed! If you have other questions, I will try to answer them!
If you have not read the story, please go do so! In all its beautiful, digressive glory, it's as much a part of the thing as the shriveled organs and tattered wings!
First, thanks go to Jenna at Shadow Manor for the awesome dead fairy doom-it-yourself prop tutorial! Much of this came from there, and the rest came from reading about people customizing larger skeletons for Halloween. Googling stuff like Halloween, Bucky, skeleton, how-to, latex, etc., will get you to any number of really good tutorials. Make sure you put in "Bucky," BTW. That's just what everyone calls cheap skeleton reproductions. A Bucky.
Anyway.
I actually made this a little over a year ago, but it has proven damnably hard to photograph, and, too, I have only just received the final story from our favorite retrocognitive psychometrist detailing its origin. The weasel was VERY late. Ahem.
How she managed to avoid making a "handy shandy" joke is anyone's guess.
It took me about a week and a half of fiddling with it for a while every evening to do this. I tore everything up and started over after about three days, by the way. The wings were done over two evenings, since I let the transparencies dry overnight.
Let me tell you, he was a lot of work! I learned a lot making him, and expect my second effort will be much better.
If you want to see more of this gruesome little gaff, please click below the cut!
I used a cheap skeleton I got at Target over Halloween for, like, two dollars. I heated it in hot water and bent it around to look more natural.
The skin is colored latex. Buy latex carpet glue at the hardware store. It will be with the flooring adhesives. It is sold in largeish plastic bottles and you will know you have the right stuff if it REEKS of ammonia. It is real latex, pure, and you can tint it with plain old craft store paint.
Latex sticks to itself like nobody's business. I brushed a thin coat of slightly brownish-tinted latex over the bones.
I made organs by tinting latex puddles, then rolling the dry latex into the shapes I wanted. Long, thin streaks of latex become entrails. A thicker, smaller puddle becomes the heart. You get the drift. It's not hard. These went into the body cavity in a roughly anatomical fashion, and were covered with a tinted layer of darker brown latex to kind of unify the colors and glue them in place.
I made "muscle" in much the same way, and lay here and there where I thought it would show through once I had the skin on. It's hard to see, so next time I will use more.
I made "skin" by tinting a puddle of it and then spreading it out into a thinner (not too thin, about the thickness of a pencil lead) puddle. Once dry it can be peeled up (carefully) and you can press it to the other latex and then draw it across the bones like skin. Once stretched, it can be punctured and cut and peeled up and so on, and the effect can be quite gruesomely real.
Other body parts can be sculpted from latex. I made the ears by snipping ear-shaped bits off of a very thick piece of dried latex "skin."
I think I'm being pretty brave showing you the back, where the wings attach. I used latex to smooth the transition and then dusted the area with interference blue paint. (If I had had them at the time, I would have used Pearl-Ex powders!) It works, but I'll try something else next time.
He came out looking more . . . juicy . . . than I had intended. I wanted a drier, more mummified look, and this guy is definitely more on the "Shh! The Maestro is decomposing!" end of the scale.
Some of that shininess is interference paint, most of it in shades of gold and blue. I reasoned that the living creatures' iridescence would not fade when they died, but would remain in whatever skin was still present.
He has realistic little organs in his abdominal cavity, all placed where they ought to go (based on what I remember from dissecting that pig in biology class).
His wings are definitely the best part. I made them (see below) and they were perfect, gorgeous, amazing. And I had to take those perfect, gorgeous, and amazing wings, and take a Dremel tool after them, because a semi-mummified fairy corpse does NOT look right next to a pair of perfect little fairy wings.
My favorite detail is the ear with the little earrings genuinely pierced through. I also love his drag queen makeup.
The eyes are pearlescent beads that fit the eyesockets perfectly. I put them in so that the holes wouldn't show, then covered them totally with latex, then cut eye slits and pushed the eyelids back to reveal the beads. I cleaned the beads of extra latex with the chewed tip of a toothpick. FANCY.
The hair I applied one fucking hair at a time, dipping the ends in latex and then applying them to the scalp.
I will not do it that way again. I will use contact cement or something that dries faster, and I will just brush the hair over the scalp and let the cement grab it.
The hair is surprisingly firmly rooted.
I covered the whole thing with a coat of flat sealer, after covering the hair with some paper towels (should have done the hair after the sealer).
Entrails! You're looking at a liver and some intestine. Also, under the tastefully-draped hair, is his man-tackle. I call attention to it not because I am proud to have sculpted a desiccated fairy penis, but because I don't want anyone staring and staring trying to figure out if that really is what it looks like. It is. I admit it. We can move on.
I created the ragged edge and the worn-through moth-eaten spots by putting the wings (not yet on the fairy) against a flattish stone surface and using a Dremel sanding tube thingy on it. It worked really, really well, and it was a LOT of fun, even though on some level I was SCREAMING because I was destroying something so pretty, and I didn't even know if it would work.
The wings are both translucent and iridescent, both of which are fiendishly hard to photograph.
Just a neat picture.
Real butterfly wings can get clear-ish spots when they have had all the scales rubbed off. So I think this look is pretty effective at conveying that. Also, the slight texturing of the printed image (more on that later) gives it the appearance of being covered in butterfly dust.
This is the display case I bought as raw wood and finished myself. It was a lot of goddamn work to get the inside the way I wanted it, and I am still not happy with it.
Still, it will get displayed like this because I really haven't figured out what else to do with it.
The BEST PART of the entire experience, so help me god, was taking the case AND the fairy in to Michael's framing department and picking out a matboard color I liked. People kept walking up and making these horrified faces and then moving to the other side of the framing area. The guy who was helping me thought it was awesome, though.
Okay, the wings. Quick and dirty.
The wings are two pieces of inkjet transparency film sandwiched over a layer of Fantasy Film. The Fantasy Film is a thin plastic tissue that is iridescent as hell, and it comes in many different colors. I believe this one is "waterfall" but don't quote me on that. Normally you have to order this stuff online. However, I found some stuff that is a LOT like it at the dollar store! It is sold as gift wrap tissue, and comes in LARGE sheets, two or four to a bag. I haven't tried using it in the same way I used the Fantasy Film, I don't know how well it would do the other stuff that Fantasy Film supposedly does, I'm just throwing this out there as a cheaper, easier to find alternative that MIGHT work. Worth trying, I just haven't tried yet.
I drew some butterfly wings on paper, scanned them, colored them in Photoshop, added some noise to the colored areas with the noise filter to give it a slightly grainy look, then mirrored and rearranged the image so that all four wings were on one page. I printed two of these.
I took the first set and sprayed it with high-quality spray adhesive (not the Aleene's stuff, the artist's stuff that's way more expensive, but also way thinner and way more transparent). I cut strips of Fantasy Film and lay it over the wings, making sure that I was laying it in the same direction along each wing, relative to the wing itself, so that the wings would match. Fantasy Film has a kind of streaky grain to it, so be conscious of that. Apply it from one edge with one hand and sort of rub and push it into place with the fingers of your other hand so that you aren't leaving air bubbles. Air bubbles can be pushed out toward the edges of the wings.
Here you can really see the iridescence.
When I had stuck the fantasy film to the first piece, I cut out the first and second set of wings VERY ROUGHLY, leaving a wide margin around each. I sprayed the second set with adhesive. Looking through the wings at the light, I aligned the edges as closely as I could and pressed them together. I lay them under a sheet of newsprint and burnished over them to set the glue and to push out any air bubbles.
Then I cut around the borders as closely as I could with a pair of very sharp scissors. If you are better with a craft knife, use that.
The wings were too flat. They needed veining. I found some stuff that is sold as craft foam glue that you can write and draw with as well. It's very soft and about the consistency of bottled acrylic paint, but holds its shape much better. I found a set of tiny bottles with tiny detachable tips, almost like syringes. I don't think I could have done this without those tiny tips. Find something similar if you can. I filled the bottles with the black foam glue and drew the veins on. Work top to bottom, side to side, and be careful not to smear it. Clean up small mistakes with damp cotton swabs. Dried mistakes can be scraped or trimmed away with a craft knife. It dries pretty quickly. Do one side, turn them over and do the other. Then do the edges, around the outside of the wing. Put it on top of something like a couple of pop bottle caps that will keep the wet edges off the table while it dries.
Up close, I didn't get them aligned perfectly, and in a couple of places, I put the veins on one side of the wing in a different place. These are tiny details that were mostly destroyed when I Dremeled the fuck out of these bitches.
Oh, and when you Dremel them, or use a sanding block, or whatever, WEAR A MASK and EYE PROTECTION and DO IT OUTSIDE. SERIOUSLY. I AM NOT KIDDING. And wear clothes you won't mind washing right away. You will get plastic dust EVERYWHERE. Also, it stiiinks.
When I'd done that, I took the tattered wings and used a clicker lighter -- NOT a candle; candles leave black soot on everything, use something that burns cleanly! -- held way, way under the wings to sort of warp some areas, and clean up some of the tattered edges. The plastic, when heated, pulls together into a smoother edge. Hold the wing way above the flame and lower it down slowly, don't just click the lighter under the wing and let 'er rip.
When that was done, I coated one side of the wings with gloss sealer (the outside, visible from the rear) and the other with a flat sealer (the inside, visible from the front). Butterfly wings are duller on one side, after all.
Then I attached them.
I think the biggest problem is that I used a crappy base skeleton. It looks good, but the hands and feet look fake, and there was only so much I could do to change that. I have bought two Petite Pete skeletons from the Anatomical Chat Company (I used their Amazon storefront but you don't have to). I will use those next time and probably get a better effect.
Dear lord, this was a lot of work. *pant pant pant*
I hope you enjoyed! If you have other questions, I will try to answer them!