He's Done. Finally.

Here's a project that I have been working on for about a year. That sounds like a lot, but I only worked on it for a few minutes here, a few there. I think the total actual time was probably more like 20 hours.

Anyway, here's the process.

It all started when a neighbor was throwing away a perfectly good globe that only had a collapsed southern hemisphere. I looked at the northern hemisphere and, naturally, the first thing I thought was "Hey, that looks like R2-D2's head!"



The next thing I did was find a few good pictures of R2-D2 for reference. The diameter of the globe is 12", so with that measurement, I brought the images into Illustrator, tossed on a grid, sized the images so the diameter was 12 units and, ta da! I could now figure out the correct dimensions of everything else. I drew up a few schematics and moved on to construction.

First, I needed materials. I searched for 12" diameter cylinders for a few weeks. I considered 5 gal buckets, but they were not exactly the right size and they had a bunch of extra plastic around the top. I looked at plastic garbage cans, but they almost always tapered a bit. Finally, I thought of a sonotube. It's a cardboard tube used for making concrete pillars. We used one when we built the Thanksgiving Point water tower on the Lehi pioneer-days float 7 years ago. A quick visit to Home Depot, and I had a 12" diameter cardboard cylinder. It was 4 feet long, and I only needed 15", so I cut it down to size. Incidentally, if anyone has any cool ideas of what I can use the remaining tube for, let me know. It's now in 2 pieces.



For the legs I chose my best friend, foamboard. 3/4 inch. I also cut some circles and glued them into the tube and the dome for extra support. I used a poster mailing tube for his neck.



With help from the R2-D2 builder's group online, I got a template of R2's skin. I scaled it down and simplified it a bit.



I covered the cylinder with white poster board and struggled with what to use for the outer skin. I considered more poster board, but it was so thin that you really couldn't see the depth. I tried styrene plastic (1/16"). This stuff is amazing, and I will use it in future projects for sure. The cool thing about it is that first, you can cut it with an exacto knife (straight cuts just require a simple score and break), and second, you can heat it up with a hot air gun (or oven) and it becomes pliable, within seconds it hardens into the new shape. I actually covered the back half with it and cut out all the shapes. In the end I decided that it wasn't going to work. Although straight cuts are easy, if they are on the interior surface, you can't easily snap them off so you have to make a zillion cuts. I ripped off the plastic and went with craft foam.

The sheets are smaller than I needed, so I had to piece together 4 sheets to cover him. But talk about easy. I was able to glue it down with elmers glue and cut out all the pieces in just a couple of hours (compared to about 4 hours on one side - and needing to use super glue, with the styrene).





As for the details on the body, I built them out of foamboard and styrene plastic. For his face, I used parts from old camera lenses, video cameras, water bottles, and plastic Easter eggs. The feet are also constructed out of foamboard but I used 3" tires from a big RC Mercades and wire hangers for the axles.

Then I spray painted the head silver and the body and legs glossy white (the foam stood up just fine, though it didn't get very glossy). Next I hand painted the metallic blue and a bit of silver where needed. I connected his legs to the body using toilet paper tubes.







True fans may notice that he isn't actually 100% finished. He's missing the battery packs on his inner feet with cable connecting into the foot. I will be using several toilet paper tubes for those, so I'm waiting for the inventory. Once I got him this complete though, Val wanted him out of the house, so he lives in my office at work. For now he sits on my couch, but I have the idea brewing of building him a proper "place". Maybe a simple pedestal, or maybe the top of an X-wing fighter - wait why not a full sized X-Wing fighter! Well, no hurry, the idea will come eventually.

Oh, And he made it to work in time for Halloween, so here he is in costume.

...The Highest Form of Flattery

Today, instead of going down to San Diego with my friends to catch the BYU vs SDSU game, I decided to do something with my family. We went to the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin and Art Festival. It was a lot of fun - way more fun than the totally predictable outcome of the football game.

To get to Half Moon Bay, heretofore referred to in the local gangsta speak as HMB, you hop on hwy 92 and drive west until you come to the ocean. I let Valerie drive because she tends to get car sick on windy (as in very winding - not as in very blowing) roads, and 92 is super squiggly. You know you're getting close because you pass a field of pumpkins.


Then you pass another, and another.



And then you pass 2 more.

And then you pass another.

And another.

And, you guessed it:

A bunch of metal dinasaurs.



Once we got there, we followed the crowd to an empty field with a guy taking $5 to let you park. He had no uniform or anything, so for all we know he was some homeless guy who once asked someone for five bucks, and upon seeing him receive that money, everyone else decided he's the guy to pay.

Anyway, we walked from the parking field down the main street and came to a booth run by some organic snack food company. They were giving away free samples so Val and her friend Lora (who brought her family too), grabbed as many as they could carry and started stashing them in every nook they could find in our strollers. As we continued walking down the street we noticed that there was a line of people a block long waiting to get the samples. We totally cut in front of everyone!

After deciding that we may have a couple hundred people mad at us, we decided to get lost in the crowd, so we visited all the craft booths. It was your average street festival type of set up - times 3! Tons of booths selling paintings, photos, jewelry, pottery, puppets - all the stuff you expect to see - just a lot more of it.

There were several new ideas that we saw though. (Disclaimer: "New" to me. Maybe its all some ancient art that you already deem obsolete, but it was new to me) This is where I derived the name of this post. We took pictures of everything and I am sharing them here with you all because I'm sure you'll flatter the artists by imitating them - or by just flat out stealing their ideas.

The first is probably not that new, but I saw a bunch of people walking around with their new purchase, and I don't remember seeing this exact implementation.
It's vinyl nonsense signs on glass or Plexiglas in a frame. You can fit a lot more nonsense in a picture frame!


Next, we have framed pictures made from polymer clay. They are dimensional, but still pretty shallow so they don't feel like deep shadow boxes. Some are matted a different levels so it feels like it all belongs together, rather than a matte on one plane and the image on another. The style totally reminded me of Mom.




Next are quilted quiet boxes. They had quiet books too like the ones that have a pocket on each page where you hide a soft little animal. These boxes were the same idea - just in box form.



The last craft is these cool "crazy" bird houses.



So after loosing the mob in the craft booth crowd, we checked out some of the other sights.

Giant pumpkins!


Giant pumpkin carving! (And No, I don't mean pumpkin carving being done by larger than life people.)


Soon it was time for a potty break. If only we could find a toilet.


It turns out that the toilets were the only place without a crowd.

While there we made a discovery.

Apparently the toilet was haunted.

That's a joke (though they were very scary). It's a little funnier when you follow the signs to the actual haunted house and find an outhouse at the beginning.


We took all the kids (except Zoey) through the "Family Friendly" haunted house. It was pirate themed and all the scary actors were kids, so it was just right for even Xander. A little scary - but not too much. The kids all loved it the most out of the whole day.
I think I did to.
Well, that and the fact that BYU was able to win even without my support.
Not going to San Diego was definitely the better choice!

Like Father, Like Daughter... sorta.

It's October! That means it's almost Halloween! My favorite time of year! Time to Decorate!



When we moved to California, we were moving into a teeny tiny apartment with no storage space. We had to make some sacrifices, so I sold 90% of my Halloween decorations. It was fine at the time, but every Halloween since has been a bit depressing when it comes to decorating. Last year Val was so depressed about it that she and the kids made a bunch of decorations for the house. After Halloween, she bought a few decorations at the post-Halloween sales for us to use this year. One thing she got me was a 3 foot articulated skeleton.
I like skeletons.
I named him "Bones" after my last 3 foot articulated skeleton who got "garage sold".

Tonight we decided to decorate the house for FHE. I broke out the 3 - no, the 2 - no, our only box of decorations and we went to work. 30 seconds later the house was decorated with a giant spider on the chandelier, window clings on the window, my funeral dirge playin' skull on top of the book shelf, and three porcelain ghosts on another shelf. All done. But wait! where is Bones?



Why, he's (or rather "she's", as I have been informed) playing with Mia!



Mia has adopted Bones as her friend. Bones sat next to her on the tiny couch. They played dress up. They danced and did gymnastics. Bones is having the best time ever. Mia likes how big Bones is - almost as big as her - yet she can carry her around like her own baby.





The picture at the top of the post is where Bones was left when Mia went to bed. tucked snugly in the corner (Mia's Happy Spot), with a box for a pillow and another box in case she gets bored.


It's nice to see how my love of Halloween and scary movies has rubbed off on my kids. I first noticed it when warning Xander that a movie is "kinda scary" convinces him to watch, even if he has to stop his tantrum first. They love movies like Coraline (Mia wants to be her for halloween), Nightmare Before Christmas, The Corpse Bride, Monster House, and the "scary" Harry Potters.



My kids aren't strange or creepy or goth or "Wednesday" like (think Addams Family). They are cheerful, pleasant, happy kids. In fact, they are fascinated by the pretend nature of scary things. Maybe I'm raising a brood of future visual effects giants!

One can only hope.

Crafty Nonsense Signs

So I was looking through my brother's wife's blog Poppies at Play last night. It's pretty amazing, all the craftiness she does (and her blog followers too). One thing that seems to be really popular all around, and to be honest has been popular for years, is the idea of putting vinyl lettering on a painted slab of wood. I call these nonsense signs. Well, I thought I'd get in on the action. So I've analyzed the concepts and would like to offer some better ideas to all those crafty folks out there.

The biggest thing I've noticed is that the words you put on the boards don't have to mean anything - hence the name nonsense sign. I don't mean use gibberish, I mean use any words you like.
Here's an example I found on the internet. It's a pretty cool idea. Make a bunch of oversize scrabble tiles and lay them out on your wall. The only problem with this one is that the words have no connection to one another (other than the physical cross-word connection).


Here's my update to the idea. All of the words have a meaningful connection to one another. In fact the placement to the names relative to each other may have profound meaning and should cause you to ponder.



The next idea is to choose a quote from somewhere. Here's one from the internet.



Duh! Apparently you should find a quote that states the obvious. To make it better, choose a useful quote, like this one from Yogi Berra.




The next idea is to take 2 unrelated words or phrases, put one in big bold letters and the other in small, skinny script, of contrasting color, directly on top of the other. The most common usage of this is a last name in bold and the phrase "families are forever" as the subscript. This is great, but be more creative! Pick words that are interesting to you like this.



Next we have this - and it's really fun. It's simply the last few words from a book. This is a poor example because the ellipses should be in front of the phrase indicating it is the end fragment of a sentence. But the idea is to not use a full sentence, but instead the last half or so. The best part is that the ambiguity of it's meaning is it's appeal.


Here's my version. I took the last words directly from "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"



Three more Ideas to go.

Choose a few random, alliterative nouns, and place a cute symbol between them. Here's one from the internet.


And here's my better version.



Next we have this.


It's a gerund with it's descriptor (the adjective). What the heck is "Country Living" supposed o mean? It doesn't matter! Here's mine.



The last one is the most minimalist. Simply use a single word. The best kind is is an imperative verb - like you are commanding someone. Andy made a big sign that said "Gather". Here is mine.



I hope I've inspired you to go out and buy a vinyl cutter and some wood and start making nonsense signs of your own!

Genetics

One of the fun things about being a parent is when you see how much of yourself (or your family) gets inherited by your kids. Valerie spent the last four days in Michigan, with Zoey, visiting her family. That left me home alone with the other three kids. I was able to observe a couple of cool inheritances in my kids.

First, do you remember back when I was about 13 or 14, Joe was a year younger, and Sarah was about 10? If you are a member of my family, you probably do - unless you are Caleb (who wasn't born yet) or probably Abby (who was really little). If your are not a member of my family, it's ok, remembering it isn't all that important because I'm going to tell you about it anyway - so calm down. Anyway, Mom and Dad would head off on an adventurous weekend where they would save the world in the wilds of Borneo, leaving us kids to fend for ourselves. They knew we would be safe because Sarah would babysit everyone. Well not everyone, me and Joe didn't need babysitting, but we had more important things to do than watch a bunch of kids (like play Super Mario Brothers), so we were there just in case there was an emergency. Sarah took care of everyone else. She fed them, changed diapers, bossed them arround, mediated their arguments, put them to bed, gave them baths, etc.

Well it turns out that CJ has inherited that! I was obviously a carrier of the '10 year old taking care of everyone' gene (which was deactivated in me by the presence of a Y chromosome). These past four days CJ has cooked, cleaned, fed, bathed, played with, taught, mediated, and altogether mothered Mia and Xander while Val has been gone. Me? I had better things to do (like play Playstation and XBox) . She is awesome and I really couldn't have done it (by 'it' I mean get 150 head shots with my AK-47 in Call of Duty 4) without her. All kidding aside, she gets so excited to be the mom and reminds me a ton of Sarah that way.

The next thing I observed is something inherited not from me, but from Valerie.

It was very hot on Friday. It got up to 82 degrees. Hah! you may scoff - you who live in the middle of a desert! Well, you have to understand that becasue the average temperature (with the cool breeze coming off the Bay) is about 65- 70 degrees, no one here has an air conditioner. All you need to do is open the windows and you get a wonderful natural air conditioner. That's great until the temperature reaches 80 degrees. At that point, the wind stops. Now you are in an un-airconditioned house with no breeze at all. To make things worse, we live upstairs, so all the hot air accumulates in our house. While it's 82 degrees outside, its more like 89 degrees inside. Sure we have fans blowing nonstop, but it really is unbearable.

I tell you all this so that you will have some sympathy for us. Also, I tell you this so you understand why I left Mia's bedroom window open overnight Friday night. While she slept, a swarm of twenty million mosquitos came into her room and ate her, leaving a dry husk behind. Ok, so that is an exaggeration, there was really probably just one mosqito, and rather than a dry husk, it left a plump, oozing, puss filled princess behind. You see, Mia has inherited Val's alergy to Mosqitos. I didn't even know people could be alergic to mosquitos! Of course, I have inherited my mother's mosquitophobic aura which repels mosquitos. On the rare occasion that I get bit, the mosquito either combusts spontaneously, or imediately flies off in a panic, seconds before exploding with a loud POP! (CJ has inherited this from me). Afterward, there is hardly a mark of their attack.

Poor Mia (and Val) , draws mosquitos to her. They fly from the other side of the world just to taste her blood! After they bite her, rather than the little pimple-like itchy spot most people know, she gets a huge welt or hive that is frighteningly huge. On Friday night, she got bit a total of 10 times; One on her forearm, one on her triceps, one on the tip of her finger, and 7 times across her face, giving her a black eye.





I know! I know! they look like spider bites, but they're not. As miserable as she looks, she is actually still very cheerful - she gets that from Val too. I did, however get scolded by her about leaving her window open overnight. She told me I need to remember to shut it so the mosquitos (she cant say it, so pronounces it either "skamitos" or "posquitos") don't "eat her guts".

Oh, one last thing, we're talking about genetics - we get some of our genes from an egg - i have a picture of eggs at the top of the post! Ha! I tied it in! I really just wanted to show off the smiley that my eggs made by themselves - right before we turned them into lemon bars. The mouth was actually even cooler, but by the time I grabbed the camera to take the picture, it has started to slide to the side.

One more "one last thing":

I got mutton chops!

Also known as the kissable beard, (Val won't kiss me when I have facial hair) or inverted goatee. Check out how much red hair I have!

Señor Vader

Xander just turned three, and since he is a huge Star Wars fan, we threw him a Star Wars themed birthday party. I'll let Val tell you specifics about the party on her blog, but she asked me to make something for the party, so I thought I'd share the step by step process.

The Project: a Darth Vader Piñata.

Step 1. Blow up a balloon. (you can do this your self, or ask someone with more experience to help).

Step 2. Paper-mache the balloon. (If you don't know how to do this, ask a kindergartner) For best results, I mix 1 cup of flour with enough water to make it about the consistency of white glue - then I add about half a bottle of white glue for added rigidity. I cover it with 3 full layers of newspaper. Let it dry for 24 hours - If you cheat and move on before a full day has passed, you are either impatient or terrible at following directions.

Step 3. Pop the balloon and pull it out leaving a nice shell. Now cut a hole in the top big enough to put all the organic, free-range, post-consumer recycled fruit (or whatever goodies you want) into it. I also made a ring from poster board and glued it to the bottom of the shell as a stand (It is also Señor Vader's neck).



Step 4. Add the string. You probably never thought about it before, but a pinata takes a lot of strain right at the point where the rope connects into the pinata. If you just poke some holes and run a string through them, the pinata will just fall out of the tree after a couple of hits while remaining intact. The solution? Run the string around the whole egg shape. That way, the strain is being taken across the whole surface. Tack it down in a few places with hot glue and add a layer or 2 of paper mache. For this one, I will be adding a face and helmet, so I just glued it down without the extra paper mache.



Step5. Sculpt the face and helmet. I used poster board and hot glue. It's ok to leave gaps here and there because I will be covering everything with more paper mache. I'm basically just building a frame to lay the paper mache onto.



Step 6. Cover everything with paper mache and let it dry another 24 hours. Make sure you cover the goodie hole with some posterboard so you don't soak the goodies.




Step 7. Paint it. Black. Glossy. Use spray paint (If you need help here, ask a teenage boy).



Step 8. Beat the Force out of it. Of course there is really only one way to properly break a Señor Vader pinata --- with a lightsaber! Luckily Valerie got some for pretty cheap at Oriental Trading.