I return from a week hiatus from technology. I have a backload of messages! But that's okay... I needed to concentrate. Also, my fingers were smothered in wax. I'll explain:

Sunday after dinner Obdulia (my partner in art crimes) appeared with 10lbs of plaster, a crockpot of high end wax, various tools, and a determination like you would not believe. Over the last six months or so she's been perfecting a wax ball jointed doll so that eventually we will have metal ball jointed dolls. To our knowledge, this has never been done before. It is terribly exciting. I'm a totaly novice with metal, but Obdulia has a full scholarship for her master in sculpture with an emphasis in metalwork at Kansas State. To put it mildly, she's really good at what she loves: METAL.

In order to make a metal doll we realized we'd need to make a wax one first to experiment with the metal pouring. Smartly, we also knew we'd need duplicates. That's where the plaster comes in...

All night Sunday we made molds from the originals using the YC method... hard to explain. Luckily I took quite a few moldmaking classes back in collage. Obdulia has mad wax skills, I mad mold skills. It still took forever, of course. You don't want a crap mold. It defeats the purpose. So Monday evening the Obdulia monster reappeared. We worked again through the night with some crap lights in the backyard mixing plaster, pouring plaster, scraping plaster... probably breathing quite a lot of plaster... Anyway, we finally got the molds finished. As I live a block from the ocean on a peninsula it is terribly moist at my house. So we had to wait a few days for the plaster to dry enough to be useful. It's slightly ironic as you have to soak the molds in water before you pour the wax into them...

On Thursday Obdulia came over at a reasonable hour for once (10AM), but we work horses that we are she didn't leave until 1AM the next day... teehee. She also had a fever and chills. I tried to get her to rest as much as I could. She's so hardcore. I guess I am too...

We poured two extra sets of pieces. By late afternoon we had them dried and mostly de-seemed. Then the fun detailing had to happen. That is what took us into the night. Poor Obdulia was sneezing all day and no medicines seemed to help. Eventually I just nuked her with ibuprofen and that got her fever down enough so I felt okay letting her drive home. She'll be back on Sunday, probably to finish up. She flies to Kansas on Monday to have a good old fashioned IRON pour. Scares me to death. Molten anything scares me to death. I have trouble with hot soup...

So the first attempt will be iron. After that we'll try to make bronze ones and eventually fall back on aluminum. The Iron ones will be pretty expensive as will the bronze. We'll probably go nuts with patinas and that'll make them one of a kind even in the limited editions. Luckily, the aluminum ones will be affordable for the average doll collector.

If anyone is interested just let me know. I'm making a waiting list. It'll be a while, as we aren't sure how successful the first attempt will be. Then we have to grind the bageezus out of them so they'll funtion properly. But if we get these things working, they'll be AWESOME. For up to date info on the process and what we actually have, see [link] I will also be making a subcatagory in my flickr eventually. I'll keep everyone posted.

Have a fantastic hallowe'en!