It's Over

The street festival I was working so hard to get ready for is over, and I can relax. The fact is, we don't have any more appearances scheduled, so it's hard to work up a lot of enthusiasm for 'getting ready'.

On the other hand, I have some watermelon product that doesn't have a long shelf life while in the liquid form, so I've got to get it into molds and let it solidify. So I am doing that. That only takes 5-10 minutes of an evening. (And then let it cure for 24 hours.)

If you've been reading along with these posts, you may be wondering how I did. The answer is, "Better than I've done in the past, but not great." However, I had a lot of interest in looking at my prosthetics, now that they were displayed in a way that people could see what I had. I even had Mandalorians and Star Fleet officers stop by to look them over, and a couple people who said, "I'll be back," who didn't manage to come back before the festival closed.

Next year's SyFy Bartow will be themed for Star Trek. The Klingons had great success this year at their booth, and have suggested that I ask to be located next to them next year. That way, I'm right there, ready to sell a bumpy forehead to those who want to jump into Klingon-dom right away. They also suggested that I 'paint' foreheads on people with make-up, as a cheaper way to 'live the experience'. I'll have to practice my painting skills between now and then. Thankfully, I have a practice dummy head, so I can do that. What I don't have is a broad range of skin-tone make-up, so I'll need to get some more of that.

On the other hand, I rather liked where I was located this year. Fairly centrally located, and yet, only a few feet away from the dog adoption booth. Everybody wants to go see the dogs. And I'm happy to report that they adopted out all their dogs by about 4 pm. Not that I had anything to do with that, but I'm happy to see so many dogs find happy, forever homes.

I also had quite a few requests for 'elf ears' or 'Vulcan ears', but I haven't created any of those yet. Like me, the people asking didn't want the '1-size fits all' ears that are out there, they wanted something that would glue to the tops of their ears. Now that I've got Bjoran noses, I suppose I'd better get started working on ears.

So, yeah, I have stuff I need to do to get ready for the next show, whenever it might be. I'd better put some goals on my To Do list so I don't forget to work on these projects.

We're on a Collision Course!

I'm writing this Wednesday night. Bartow is Saturday, so I've got 2 days to get everything done, packed and loaded in the car. How am I doing? Am I going to make it?

In one sense, yes, I'll make it, because whatever I get done and packed is what I'll have to work with. In another sense, no, I won't, because making 'a few' more copies of small prosthetics that I've never had very many of has turned into... well, a learning experience, I guess.

Prosthetics Display Project - Done. Hubby even inscribed 'Myers Prosthetics' in the 2 base boards today. The rods to hold up the foam heads are packed, the foam heads are packed.

Final Prosthetics on Display - Still not done. I have 2 - 4 small prosthetics that need to be painted and glued to the final foam head. With a little luck, I'll get that done tomorrow. Assuming the latex versions I'm trying to make come out okay in the morning.

Signage - Done and Packed. Unless I think up some humorous signs to post. Might happen.

Making some small prosthetics - Ugh! I realized I had very few cyborg relays (from 7 of 9's cheek) and cyborg eyepieces (also from 7 of 9), and I thought I could pop out a few of each in watermelon, which is a new product, which takes less time than latex to dry in the mold. But when I looked around for a mold for them, the only one I could find was for dragonskin. (Didn't really want to drag out the dragonskin chemicals every day to make a tiny little batch.) I also had recently sculpted a Bjoran nose ridges piece that hadn't been made into ANY kind of mold yet.

We have some clay that you can melt and pour into a mold and let it harden to make what I call a 'plug'. It's got all the details that were in the original mold, and then you make another mold using those plugs. Small prosthetics like this are usually done several at a time, in a sheet mold.

So, I had to affix my plugs to a smooth tile, which required getting out the heat gun to soften up the plug backs so the clay would adhere to tile. Kind of overheated my Bjoran nose plug, which was made from sculpting clay, so I spent a couple hours fixing what I had sculpted and finally got it attached to the tile. Then I spent most of a day building a box around the plugs before I could pour in the plaster. Then I got really busy doing other stuff for a day. So the plaster was good and cold by the time I got back to it.

First, I had to take apart the box. The Bjoran nose plug came out with no problem. Horray! However, I used the wrong mold release for the melting clay, so I couldn't get those plugs out. I finally resorted to using the heat gun again, and got most of the clay out, although my details weren't very clear inside. I called people, told them what I had done, and asked if there was anything I could do to clear out the rest of the stuff. I was told to soak the cavities in alcohol and use a wooden pick to pry out the remaining bits of clay. I might have to do that several times. Well, eventually, I felt like I had cleaned it out as best I could, so yesterday afternoon, I put a layer of latex into those molds. Latex is the cheapest prosthetic material, so I felt if it pulled out little bits and pieces of clay, I wouldn't be wasting a lot of money. Today I started casting in earnest. If all goes well, I'll have new prosthetics to pull tomorrow. Do another set tomorrow to pull Friday, then package and pack them. I still won't have a lot of them, so I'll be casting new ones even after Bartow.

Wish me luck.