My Favorite Time Of Year!

Day of the Dead with Aunt Acidoh, I do love the time of year when summer is over, winter isnt here yet—and the fall weather starts to make  inroads into the garden. There are wonderful holidays at this time, including Halloween, when I’ll be in Houston Texas at the International Quilt Festival again with Judith Skinner, taking lots of new beads, jewelry, faces, and other items made from polymer clay, plus spirit doll kits and more. 

The Day Of The Dead gets celebrated around here for more than just one day, as do many holidays. This year my polymer-clay-headed spokesmodel Aunt Acid is taking a turn displaying her flowers and skulls decked out in DOTD finery and seated with her dogs in the front window of Nomad Designs, a fabulous bead bazaar in Boulder Colorado where you can find all sorts of exotic things.

Backstage Life

Aunt Acid on her soapboxFor every scintillating moment of a fabulous show, there are hundreds and sometimes thousands of hours of creative work that go into making it happen. “My Dad has a barn–my Mom has some costumes in the attic…lets put on a show!”. Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland knew how much went into each shining moment, no matter how easy they made it look  in the final cut. Lighting, sets, costumes, hair and makeup, choreography and music, and many more special skill sets and jobs come into play. Things progress from the design phase, where many choices are tried out and refined until the designer has a pretty good idea of what to do to make it all real. Then the production phase takes over, and things have to be flexible in the process of making the designs come to life. Intricate work takes a great deal of time and effort. But oh, my…it really is worth it. At first glance, you’d never know what all goes into making up the event you see on stage.  Things start out as ideas, progress to sketches and more specific designs, and with a great deal of attention to detail on the parts of many people , things get done.

Lately we’ve been working on lots of things that tie up together in creative connections. We’re making mosaic tiled tables, set pieces for our upcoming Internet puppet show extravaganza, “The Aunt Acid Show“, encrusted instruments, even a sequined soap box or two. Costumes and props, stage and set construction are all progressing, and Aunt Acid herself is all pulled together and ready for her fittings and her closeups!

setsketch.jpg

This is the design sketch for the show’s set pieces.
Just wait till you see how THAT turns out!

With a show debut date of July 4th, we’ve got a
tremendous amount to do…
Check in again soon and see how its all coming along!

How About A Hand…

Sister CollywobbleI spent an hour or two yesterday looking at links on the ‘net, and adding several favorites here, plus a little re-organization–some links fit in many catagories; they could be Dolls/Miniatures or Puppet/Props or Costume/Textiles…so be sure not to overlook some great links due to the organizing, do poke around! I’ve added more than a dozen new links. Quite a few are in the new Puppet/Props catagory. We really like puppets and all sorts of animation here at our house. “Gumby” was one of the first popular claymation characters that helped introduce American audiences to the potentials of polymer clays. Although made with the non-hardening varieties, the clays offer ease of  movement that animators love. The “Wallace & Grommit” shorts and features made by Aardman Animations are another well known use of clays in animation. Cloth puppets often make use of some clay parts, notably eyes and teeth, and polymers also make for great costume details and props. My son Ian is in film school, and uses puppets in many of his movies. Here’s one created for his movie “Collywobbles”. Sister says “Do It Now” which is sort of a family saying here….

He used polymer clay to make faux rocks in which the  Title was inscribed—much easier tha carving REAL rocks. The creative connections come home to roost  along with the chickens here at our house, and Ian gets a hand here with the costumes (from Mom) and music for soundtracks (from Dad) and a round of applause for the finished productions from the rest of the clan. In his spare time he writes reviews with his cronies–take a look at confusereviews.com if you’d like to skew your slant on the day with some darkly humorous pokes at movies, games, books and more.