Paper Mache Fish - Step 3 - Attaching Front to Back

In this step, I'm attaching the front pieces of the fish body and tail to the back pieces of the fish body and tail.  I've been lax in posting this because I realized my fish has a design flaw, and I'm worried I won't be able to compensate for it.  You see, I should have made the body and tail as one piece - i.e., body/tail front, body/tail back.  By making the tail separately from the body, I'm most likely making the area that connects the body to the tail a weak point.  I've come up with a few ideas for  remedying this situation, but if you're just reading and contemplating making a fish, do what I didn't do and connect the tail to the body right from the start.

So to begin this step, I assembled my basic pieces - I also used a few very large rubber bands and a small cardboard box to aid in the assembly that are not pictured here - you'll see how I use them later on.

First, trim the rough edges so they more closely resemble the shape you want.  This is not a precise operation, you just want to make sure they will fit together as nicely as possible.  Do this for both the tail pieces and the body pieces (or, if you are the type that reads directions BEFORE assembly, you will have just one front piece and one back piece - hurray for you, you overachiever!)

This is where my extra large rubber band came in SO handy...  you don't want your two pieces slipping and sliding around after you begin putting the gluey paper mache strips on them...  that would be a great, big YIKES.

 I put a wadded paper napkin in between the two pieces where I wanted there to be some separation - in this case, where the tail will attach to the fish.  You can use the same idea in any location where the pieces aren't laying flush with each other, or if you need to elevate a section.  

Now, begin adding connecting strips of paper mache around the edges...

Make them as smooth as you can to avoid fixing the bumps later on.

I worked for as long as possible with the rubber band on - it helped to keep everything in place.

I kept this end open so that I could slide this over one end of the fish, but as you know, on any future fish, I would make it all one piece...

Walla.....  time to dry.

For the fish body, after trimming excess paper off the edge, I bent the wires around the edges to attach the front to the back.   I added this craft wire with another layer of paper mache after the first layer had dried.  I'm not really sure this was necessary, but what the heck.

This time I found an appropriately sized box that I could stand my fish in while I was working on it.  I didn't have a rubber band large enough for this piece.

It was a little difficult to get the wire bent extremely flat, but I think it will still help make it stronger in the end.


Next stage of fish production:  attaching the tail to the body.

Why I Hate Deer...

Today's breakfast menu for discerning deer - Stella Doro Day Lilies  

This is a nice patch of Stella Doro day lilies in my backyard.  Oh, you only see one flower there?  What?  You want to know what all those stalky looking things are?  They're the STEMS of my day lilies.     I say STEMS because the damn neighborhood deer ate the heads off the flowers. 

I hate deer.  

My day lilies should look like this right now...

When we first moved into this house, the driveway was lined with small boxwood hedges.  The neighbors told us how they used to watch the deer eat the hedges when the previous owners lived here.  They used to look out their windows and laugh - oh how cute the deer were, and too bad they had a taste for boxwoods.  

I thought it was funny myself, not caring much for the boxwood hedge (it was a driveway, not a knot garden in the Queen's backyard) and not yet understanding the futility of fighting with the deer.  

Now, I get it.  

I love plants, and yet, I hate babying them.  I like to plant them, water them a bit, and be done with it.  Since this is my gardening style, plants like roses do not typically make their way into my yard.  I also have extremely sandy soil, lots of shade and no sprinkler system.  I have discovered certain plants that just love my style of gardening (the fend for yourself style):  day lilies, hostas, hydrangeas.  

Salad bar selections for deer.

As the years have gone by, I've tried: 

1. spraying the plants with Deer Off (expensive stuff, necessitating a do-over whenever it rains), 

2. hanging shiny things amongst the plants (my deer are to smart for that crap - either that, or they are also part Italian, and instead of fearing it, they just appreciate a little bling in their surroundings)  

3. sprinkling the garden with garlic powder and/or cayenne pepper or, in a pinch, Taco seasoning (with minimal success, although it sure does overpower the smell of flowers!)

4. placing tufts of dog hair around the garden (they must be laughing at me behind my back when I do this... maybe we're talking about wild deer?  Mine are surely jaded suburbanites)

5. chasing after them, waving long sticks

6. throwing rocks at them to scare them off (again, is that deer laughter?)

7. fencing the yard (I recently proposed to my husband that we top off the 4 foot split rail fence with another 4 feet of fencing on top so the deer won't be able to jump over it.  He asked me if I was crazy.)

I thought about getting one of those motion sensor water jet items, but it's somewhere in the range of 100.00, and I'd need a bunch of them - along with a bunch of hoses, and it seems ironic that I would spend that much effort thwarting the deer when I'm unwilling to put in that much effort to water the plants.  

The only thing that works reliably is this:

... fencing that completely covers the plant the deer like...

Although, if your fence does not COMPLETELY cover that plant, you may get this:

nibbled portions of my Lady in Red Hydrangea

...as I discovered this morning.  

Every month or two, when I'm up getting ready for work and the sun is just coming up, I'll spot a deer in the yard eating my plants and it makes me absolutely nuts.  When our old dog was still alive, I would rip open the back door and tell him, "Get the deer, Nyles, GET THE DEER!!"  He would tear out after them, chasing them to the back fence where they would easily hop over and stand just a few yards off in the woods and stare at him.  If I spot them and they're close, I'll chase after them myself, but it's mostly out of rage rather than a true hope of catching and giving them a good swat.  If my dog can't catch them, I haven't got a prayer.  

About eight years ago, I had a spectacular vegetable garden.  I had planted a whole host of things in it, and my husband was watering it every day. Knowing our deer problem, we had surrounded the whole garden with "deer fencing," which is a heavy netting we stretched across poles we had placed around the perimeter.  

Around 11:00 one night in early August, when the corn was growing high, the tomatoes were ripening and the watermelon was growing to be a nice size, I happened to hear something out in the garden.  I shined a flashlight out the window of the second floor and saw three pairs of glowing eyeballs peering at me from deer-head height in the center of the garden.  I stuck my head out the window...

"HEY!! GET OUT OF THERE!"   

They had the audacity to just stand there and stare at me.

I was FURIOUS.  I ran outside in my pajamas, waving a stick in my hand. 

"HEY!  SHOO!!!" I shouted again.  

They ran a few yards away, back through the ripped garden fence and just over the backyard fence.  I thought I might have won the battle that night.

I went back in the house and 15 minutes later, I checked out the window again.  The same three sets of eyes peered up at me from the garden again, but this time, when I ran outside waving my sick, they actually SNORTED at me, as if to say, 

EXCUSE me, can't you see that we're EATING?

I threw the stick end over end like a throwing ax, and they sprinted a couple of steps away, as if saying, 

Hey, lady, it's dark out, and we know you're going back inside any minute...

I threw a couple of rocks at them, which accomplished absolutely nothing, since I'm pretty awful at sports.  

I went back in the house, defeated. 

The next morning, I inspected the damage.  The garden looked like Mount St. Helen's after the volcano erupted - nothing horizontal was left at all - just the vertical stalks of the corn, and stems of the tomatoes.  Somehow they had discovered if they stood on their hind legs, they could rip the plastic fencing with their hooves, and so they had managed to get in.  

You may have won that battle, deer, but I'll be back...  

I'll be back... 

Paper Maché Fish - Step 2 - Covering the Armature and Making the Tail

After covering each of my wire fish sides with a layer of dry paper toweling, I then covered each of them with a layer of wet paper maché.  Even though I live in a fairly humid climate, our damp, humid late-spring days have been intermingling nicely with dry breezy days, and those are perfect for drying paper maché.  When I run into a soggy day, I place my newly covered pieces in the basement on a wire rack right next to the dehumidifier. It's been working perfectly.  


As you can see in the pieces above, the large grid wire showed through the first layer of paper somewhat - I remedied this by folding up appropriately sized small squares of paper toweling and placing them neatly into the low spots before I added on my second coat.  Next time I'll use my good old friend the chicken wire to cover the rough shape.

For the fish tail, I cut up a 1 gallon plastic milk container and applied a layer of paper maché to the inside of one piece in a triangle shape.  

Just a note about this, though.  I decided to make two molds of the tail so I can attach them together to give the tail some depth so it's not completely flat.  The first layer came off easily, even though I didn't coat the plastic with anything prior to starting, however, the second layer not only stuck, but it didn't seem to dry as nicely.   In light of that, don't cheap out - use a fresh container every time.

In anticipation of attaching the two sides together, when I put on the second layer, I added a edging of thin, craft wire in a spiral to one of the sides.  I am hoping this will give some strength to the seam.  Now that the second layer is dry it seems to be pretty secure, but initially I wasn't sure it would work. 

After it was completely dry, detaching the paper maché from the armature was easy.  I just pulled off the tape that was holding the piece of dry toweling over the edges, and then pulled gently...

Ah... success!

The next step will be putting these two sides of the fish together, along with the two sides of the tail...  I'm not sure if I'm doing that in two separate steps or one, great big step where I enlist the help of one of the kids (as I did in this picture) to hold it together while I apply the paper maché strips. 

Oh, and my girl wants the two of us to make her teacher a paper maché mermaid as an end of the year gift.  

We dream big!

Stay tuned!!

Paper Maché Fish - Step 1 - Armature

I haven't quite worked out my plan for fame and fortune, but I've decided that in the meantime, I'm going to make paper maché fish and sell them on Etsy.  I should be able to afford my own chef and a personal secretary after a few sales.  Pretty soon Sotheby's will be calling, asking me to do a retrospective of my paper mache, and I'll have to deliberate carefully, because I don't want to undersell talents.  

HAHA!!

Seriously, though, I've been taking a lot of heat from a couple of my friends for this.

  "You're making a what?"  

"That's so time consuming,"  

"Enough with the paper maché" 

My paper maché fish is going to bite both of their asses in my defense when I'm done.  

Anyway, I thought a fish would present a nice do-able shape, with a bit of a challenge, but not so much of a challenge that I wad it up and throw it out before I'm finished.   I checked out paper maché fish online, and there ARE a few on Etsy.com, but not so many that it you could make the case that everyone's making them, so I'm going to give it a try. 

The first step in this process is to create the armature.  

I always seem to get the best results when covering a balloon, but unfortunately, I couldn't find a balloon that would suit this purpose.  I needed an oval shaped balloon that was somewhat flat.  I thought of getting a helium balloon from a party store, but they're not made of the same rubbery stuff as conventional balloons, and I just know they won't dry nicely.  Plus, I'd still need to add something to each end to make the round balloon oval shaped, so I gave up on that idea.  

I decided to give wire (my new best friend) a try.    

I had a nice hunk of wire left over from gardening last year so I cut a rectangle about 2 ft. by 4 feet.  

...then I cut that piece in half so that I had two pieces that were pretty much square.

Then I outlined the shape I wanted on the square of wire using some thin strips of duct tape.

I used a twist tie to hold the two pieces together and then I copied the same outline using more duct tape onto the second square of wire.  You want two sides to your fish, and you want 'em to the same size!

Then I snipped all the edges that were sticking out, leaving enough wire to fold each end under.  I didn't want to get scraped to smithereens later on.

Next, I curved the wire to allow my fish to have some dimension...  he's going to be somewhere between a fluke and a blow fish in thickness.

Next, I checked to make sure my two sides would go together.  

Not bad. 

Now, I needed to fill in those giant holes so that my wet paper towels would not sink into them while drying.  I had a spool of thin wire on hand, so I wrapped it across the open areas.  If I had to do it again, I would go with my nemesis from my planet project, chicken wire.  I didn't feel like spending 25.00 on a roll of chicken wire for just this one fish, but chicken wire has smaller, more consistent holes, and even though it can cut you to ribbons, it's easier to mold into the shape you want.  

   

Next I wrapped each form with a piece of dry paper toweling.  I just scotch taped the toweling over the edges.  If I had just started covering the form with wet, sticky pieces, I might not have been able to remove them from the form later on.  Plus, it would most likely have dripped all over the place.  YUCK.  Paper maché is messy as it is - I want to keep the mess to a minimum.  

Next post:  covering the armature and making the tail.

Swimsuit Shopping...

Memorial Day weekend is upon us... no time like the present for purchasing a swimsuit...

Of course, this was not to be a day out of pleasant shopping (Who am I kidding?  When is the last time I had a complete day of pleasant shopping?) this is quick and ugly shopping... sort of like buying feminine products in a crowded Wal-Mart.

I just have one question...IS there anyone out there who actually likes shopping for a swimsuit?

Rather than risk boring you with a narrative on the subject, I'm just going to whittle it down to a list of a the top 10 reasons why this process is so horrible.  Feel free to add anything I've left out...

1.  They're so DAMN expensive!  Today I bit the bullet and spent 70.00 on a top, and 62 on a bottom.  Let's be real, is there an option here?  Is it really realistic for me to purchase just ONE of those pieces? and let's talk yardage - that's about 100.00 per square yard of fabric.  

2.  The myth of the "figure flattering" suit -  you know what I mean - the ones that tell you to get this type if you're a triangle shape, and that type if you're a rectangle and still another type if your a circle...  really?  all this from approximately 1 square yard of fabric?  - they know we're not wearing suits from the 1920's right?

3.  Why do pants come in regular sizes - 6, 8, 10, 12, and swimsuit bottoms come in "S, M, L, XL"?  today I was debating between two sizes and I got the bigger one, but now I'm worried that I might just loose it altogether if I get hit with a big wave, and if you think swimsuits are scary, SUDDEN SWIMSUIT LOSS would be even more scary... 

4.  Tops - S, M, L, XL?  Those miraculously replace all the sizes between 32A and 38C, right?  and what about those of us outside those parameters?  We are left to match tops like 30F (it's not as odd looking as you might think) with bottoms marked S, M, or L or XL. 

5.  Halter tops - I know this may just be a pet peeve of mine, but I don't need the weight of both my girls on the back of my neck.  I have enough problems with my neck as it is.  I want to put that burden on my puny shoulders instead.  

6.  Insufficient engineering - we can build a bridge across miles and miles of a frozen sea in Canada, but we can't sufficiently support two boobs at the beach? In the future, can we please put some of our best and brightest on this?  It's really a problem. 

7.  Who comes up with a majority of these prints, five year olds?  I do not want cherries on my butt.

8.  Jiggle, and lots of it.

9.  Jiggle's uglier sisters, Dimples and Rolls.

10.  People in the adjacent dressing rooms actually sounding cheerful, saying things like "oh, that looks so GOOD on you - you should definitely get THAT one"  They are all under 25 and have not yet discovered the meaning of the word "cellulite."

   

Thanks for letting me vent.  I feel better now. 

Luna Moth

The other day, I pulled the car into the driveway and my son noticed this guy (or girl) hanging out on the side of the garage door.

Apparently, my garage is very attractive to luna moths because this because this is the second year in a row this fancy looking bug has dropped in for a week long visit.   He drops in, hangs out in exactly the same spot for DAYS, and then suddenly, he's gone.

Lest you think a Luna Moth is just like a regular moth, only green, let me show you another picture:

Luna moth... and my hand.  Check out the size.  He's like a small mammal, for God's sake...  and you can see, he was not fazed in the least to have my hand right next to him while he rested there on the door frame.  I have a few questions regarding Mr. (or Ms.) Luna Moth:

What the heck is it doing?

Where did it come from, and how in the hell can it find its way back to the exact same spot two years in a row?  I'm not even kidding when I say it's on the same side of the garage door it was on last year.

Is there some symbolism going on here?  Is there some cosmic change in the works or is it....  jus springtime again.   If you're bored, google Luna Moths.  There's a whole lost of info out there.  Weird.

Who is this little guy?  Is this the opposite sex counterpart to Mr. or Ms. Luna moth?  It was hanging out patiently quite nearby.

and lastly...

Maybe this is a stupid question, but are Luna Moths the marketing symbol for Lunesta?

I think I need to get out more.  Or maybe I just need more sleep.

The best part of my day...

DISCLAIMER:  I was not paid for this endorsement of these yummy cupcakes, nor was I offered any cupcakes as payment for such, however, I would happily scarf down any cupcakes offered to me...

It's never a good when things seem to be going drastically wrong before 8:00 am...  sometimes when this happens, I try to think positively (yes, my glass is half full, but full of what?) philosophically, (what is this teaching me about my innermost self?) or I go for the Zen approach (for every bad day, a good day is surely coming).

And then sometimes I just want to throw something. 

So there I was, in the midst of having a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, when someone came into my office and informed me that there were cupcakes downstairs.  

"Go get some, quick, before there's no more left!"  She had a plateful of selections (the small, dainty sized cupcakes) and she offered me one, but I was trying to be strong.  "That's sweet of you, but no thanks."

My attempt at resisting was a futile, pointless effort, though.  My day was sucking so far, and the cupcakes were calling my name.  I had tasted these cupcakes before and they were 

AWESOME!!  

When I got to the faculty room, it was a BANQUET of cupcakes, and let's be honest, who can stay in a bad mood when there are cupcakes around?  

I chose one of the pink ones (chocolate raspberry, and you could see the raspberry chunks inside!)

Yum, yum, YUM.

These are, seriously, the best cupcakes I've ever had and according to my sister, we were raised in a  "foodies" family - we know good food.   Not that I won't eat a bad cupcake once in a while, but I know a good one when I taste one.  

These cupcakes are made by Sweetie Pi Cupcakes.  I told my friend Lech (creator of Sweetie Pi cupcakes) that her cupcake was the best part of my day, and I meant it.  Here's a link to her website, in case you want to check them out for yourself. 

 http://sweetypicupcakes.weebly.com/index.html

Happy weekend!