Category: Crystal Skull

Happy Birthday to Fred…

Hope you all had a great 4th weekend.

We drug Fred around with us the afternoon of the 4th. My dad is helping design a means of mounting Fred up how we want, and needed some measurements, so I was just going to leave him over there for dad to fiddle with.

We get to my uncle’s place (right across the street from my parents) where the family BBQ is going on and unload Fred. Of course, my Uncle Rex wants to freak some folks out, so he goes to get some wire to tie Fred to the front of his trailer. I’m standing there holding him, and 2 kids are riding their bikes. The older races past, STARING at Fred and leaving his younger brother. Who sneaks by later…crying and refusing to even glance our way. And, while it was funny at the time, that I’ve already claimed my first victim of Halloween ’08….it also has me a little worried.

I really don’t want to be bringing kids to tears of fright. Jen says, he didn’t see Fred in context, and kids would be expecting scary things on Halloween. On the other hand, the kid didn’t see Fred in context. It was just me holding Fred in full daylight. Not Fred impaled on a 10′ pole in the dark, lit by firelight with the drums going and surrounded by skulls up on poles, and a little headhunter coming out of a hut with a spear (and glow bracelets).

Of course, then there’s my little cousin who reacts by holding Fred’s hand and singing him happy birthday. So, Fred’s birthday is now officially July 4th.

Friday night, with neighbors lighting the traditional little sparklers and stuff, and me sitting on some homebrew green fire fuel that is slowly evaporating, we did our own little demonstration, and poured it all into a little soda can, lit it, then dumped it into the street to make a big puddle of green flame. This inspired the neighbors to exclaim “whoa, there’s a green fire over there!”

As much as I’ld like to get that on Halloween, as posted earlier, it’s looking less likely.

Finally, I finished off Crystal Skull design #2.

I like the carved look. All the little facets, and how they catch the light…

There once was a pinata…

Well, the pinata distraction is over.

The Power Grab Paper Mache worked well, it seems. No reinforcement tricks to the pinata (bamboo, duct tape, etc) needed. Only 7 layers thick at the end, much thinner than the previous 2 I made of traditional glue recipes. And yet, stronger, still.

I’ll have to get a few photos of it’s carcass up as well. But, I understand it survived 32 kids whacking it with a stick and a good drop when the rope it was hanging from broke before finally being put to death by an adult wielding a baseball bat.

Yeah, I think it will be strong enough to make a few halloween decorations that wont be the target of baseball bats, just fine.

A little swap meet find, here.

While slightly damaged, and obviously aged, the horns are tremendous. I’m debating just what to do with this thing, use it as is? Try to mold it? But, similar quality goat skulls go for $65 or more from Skulls Unlimited. And, the person selling it wanted $20. I got it for $10 after offering $5, and pointing out all the aforementioned damages and aging.

On one hand, it’s a bit strange just how much I’ve come to understand about skulls, able to identify a wide range, knowing this particular goat was suffering some pathology I cannot pronounce, let alone spell, but I know what I’m seeing. On the other, knowing your stuff makes it easier to barter with people.

Crystal Skull 2 is out of it’s mold, and 90% done. It’s hollow, and I had a mind to leave it so, but it’s not catching the light quite right due to that hollow center, so I’ll fill in the center soon and get pics of it up. Wonderful mold, that one. Really like the look in crystal.

So…plans for the weekend…(no work Friday, yay!)

Name the new kitten. (VLAD THE IMPALER!!!)

Jen was on board with it till people at work had no clue what or who Vlad the Impaler was. Come on, folks…DRACULA. HOW do you NOT know DRACULA!?

I actually put forward the name in jest. Along with Frankenstein and Jeckyl (since one of the 2 vets at the place we go is Dr Hyde…)

Getting Cozette to not kill the new kitten…Bumping some skull production and maybe a little Shrunken Head action as well.

On some site news.

I’ve added a link to the Rock Bottom Cemetery in the links section.

I don’t link to many places, but Blinky kicks ass! This is THE place to go to get the lindberg skull featured in the mold making, plaster skull, and crystal skull how-to’s. There is also a lot of other interesting stuff for sale there.

Speaking of the how-to’s, I’ve also added the howto for the Crystal Skull over there, and rearranged the sidebar a bit. It was time to get rid of that Indiana Jones widget, but I accidentally removed my countdown at the same time…gotta remember how I did that…

The Crystal Skull

I’ve been getting some requests for better pics of the crystal skull, tripod enabled.

My pleasure.

Here we have it catching the light from the window.

From another angle.

From the back, you can see the tiny seem I still haven’t got around to trimming off.

Then, people have asked for some lighting tests on it. Well, here is a tiny battery operated color changing LED tea light. Let’s see how it pictures when I shut myself in the laundry room and stick the skull in front of that.

It reflects the red really well.

But I think I like the blueish color better.

Then, this orange/yellow is pretty cool too.

Of course, most likely I’ll be using firelight. And, it catches light from quite a distance. But, angle seems to be the important variable. Here from well away and below the skull.

Not an optimal angle, but still catching the light just fine.

Very shortly, I will be posting a ‘how to make your own crystal skull’. I’ll warn you up front, this is not the easiest, or cheapest of projects. And it carries some dangers along with it. Poisonous fumes, chemical burns, and more standard burns. So, common sense and proper plans and all that.

Odds and ends.

May as well catch you up on a few things going on around the place.

Primarily, of course, has been the Crystal Skull. You’ll have to forgive the picture fuzzyiness, I couldn’t find the tripod.

It always sits cockeyed one way or the other due to a little ridge in the back form the seam on the mold. I need to trim it off and buff it clear now that it’s all dried up, finally.

Then we have the great rotting experiment in the backyard. Looking for a quicker/better way to rot clothes. A awefull shallow burial, based on a hunch that there’s gotta be beneficial rotting material in the soil.

Then, mow the lawn, and dump all the clippings over that, cover the clippings with newspaper and water the holy hell out of the thing.

Finally, covered all that with some plastic to keep the heat and moisture in…

For good measure I threw in some of Alec’s old pants at varying levels of the grass just for a test. So, at the end of the year, we’ll have the buried clothes according to the tutorial on the right, another set from this pile, along with 3 test pairs of pants. I think we can be fairly confident which will work best in the future by the end of the year.

Then, there’s Kyle’s doodad thing. It’s got a fair few more sticks on it since this picture was taken. Go ahead and guess what it’s for…

And, Kyle made his first full size skull.

He’s now made 3 so far. Now, if I can just get him to TRY to keep down the mess he’s making just a LITTLE…we’ll be golden.

Picked these suckers up at Savers for $1.

Don’t know exactly what they’ll be filled with. The kids caught a grasshopper and are keeping it as a ‘pet’. When it dies, I’ll have to procure it for one of em. Maybe a few more as well. 😉 And I was tempted to fill one with the excess Borax (nice white grains) I have and dance around singing “I got a jar of dirt” after watching Pirates of the Caribbean on TNT the other day. Need more jars, and a few other things to go with the whole general concept anyway.

And, Talia seems to have her own little cave of wonder these days. Now having mastered the stairs, the boys keep the door shut to keep her from their toys, and the cat food. But, She plays down in at the bottom of the stairs, and the cat swats at her from under the door. Light on, light off, doesn’t matter. She’s fairly fearless in that way. Yet, she is awefull nervous about Fred, still.