Is it madness?

So hey everyone, sorry I've been so quiet! I've just been dealing with the sads from the kitty. I do think that I'm doing a bit better now, I still get sad but I know that it doesn't help anything to continue to be sad. I don't know if that makes sense. I'm glad that we were able to give him a good life while we had him, and that we were at least able to give him a peaceful end, and that I was able to be there with him in the end. But then whenever I'm not busy the sads leak through, and partly because of that I am barely sleeping. xP (Case in point, oh look it's 1:30 am aaaa)
I'm actually not very good at discussing my feels though you guys. n_n'


I also wanted to say thank you to everyone for your support! It really meant the world to me. *hugs everyone tightly*

In more cheerful news, my preordered copy of The Hollow Crown came in today! It wasn't supposed to be in based on the original ship date until possibly into next month, so that was a pleasant surprise! I think the world decided I needed something shiny early. n_n'


Apologies to my new followers though, I think the tone of my journal is normally more cheerful. n_n' Hopefully things get back to normal around here soon.

Tonight I continued my pony sculpt! I sculpted the other side of the head and eye and I'm quite happy with how it's going. I sculpted a bit more on the body and I started the front legs. xD


I haven't posted a picture of the kitty lately, here he is sitting under our loft bed. :3

Tonight I tweaked the legs a bit more and figured out how they were going to best fit on the body. Then I put them baking! In this picture I have Frankie overseeing, since I said last time that perhaps she'd be better suited to looking at piles of body parts coming together into a new character. lol



We had Animal Planet on tonight in the background, and Talar'raa was extremely interested in the pomeranians bounding across the screen. I thought it was funny so I took a picture. :3



I also played some more Alice: Madness Returns! Scottie did too, he actually finished the game today. I was living vicariously through him since I ended up seeing much of the end. I decided to look some stuff up about what new game plus gave him since he decided that he was going to get the Nightmare difficulty trophy. I learned that each outfit from the different levels gave some benefit when equipped on new game plus, but while doing this I also learned that there was DLC for the game- dresses and weapons. They're not necessary to beat the game or anything, but they are really neat. There is one last upgrade for each weapon in the game, and each new unique dress gives you some extra ability (also, they look really neat!). Some of them seem a bit overpowered (like the White Rabbit outfit lets you slowly regenerate health when you wear it), but I am ok with that. lol
I was kind of bummed out that they were DLC, my guess were each individual thing would be for sale and it would add up quickly if I wanted them all even if I had the spare monies atm. I decided on a lark to check it out in the PS3 store to see what they cost and found that the whole bundle of dresses and weapons was only $1.99! It's actually perfect because I had $2.05 on my side of the PS3 leftover that has been sitting around unused for probably a couple of years. We buy most things on Scottie's account on the PS3 but we accidently redeemed a PSN card on my side once, and we never remember to use it. Since we don't add money there the change from whatever I did buy is usually not enough to buy anything! What can you buy with $2?! Well, I decided to go for it and buy the pack since the amount that has been languishing is perfect. lol

I am having a lot more fun now! I know that the stuff is a bit overpowered, but really, I'm ok with that. The battles were just making me angry and the point of games are to be fun right? Possibly the extra edge can just make up for the problems I see with the battle system in general. lol

I don't have pictures from today's sculpting, but I did work on my male sculpt! Scottie helped me prepare the metal rods for the leg armatures because they were really thick and I couldn't just cut them with regular snips. For strength I needed to make clay cores instead of foil cores for the legs, so I got the general shape for the leg cores sculpted and threaded onto the metal rods, and they just came out of the oven. :3 It was rather exciting to see the beginning of legs!

Yesterday and today me and Scottie continued the Kingmaker Pathfinder path, starting in on the second book in the series. It was a lot of fun and we made a lot of progress! Scottie founded his capital, built his first castle, and explored more of the region. I had a lot of fun!
( Sunday and Monday gaming )

I took some pictures of the kitty recently, I thought I should put a picture of him up! hehe He's a cutie. :3
( Kitty! )

So this morning and yesterday I worked more on my sculpts! I don't have time to get pictures right now, but I'll post them tomorrow. Right now 3 of the 4 heads have been attached to the bodies! I have the neck muscles and collarbones sculpted on the male. I'm really excited!

In other news, today was our Pathfinder game day! We actually finished part one of the Kingmaker path. I forgot to take pictures of the table during the game itself, but it was pretty epic and very fun. I took a picture of the map so far though. It turned out my GM map wasn't exactly the same scale as Scottie's player map, but it works well enough. When Scottie finishes exploring a map, I give him a tile out of the stack that I have. Now this week I'm going to read up on Part 2 so we can do that next weekend!
( The map! )

Scottie also made some wonderful food tonight! He made homeade tortillas, spicy hamburger, topped that with pecorino cheese, lettuce, and had sides of grape tomatoes and avacado slices. So delicious!
( Awesome healthy foods )

Also, the kitty has decided the Wii fit balance board is his bed. I'm not sure why since it's certainly not soft. We do joke that he likes the smell of feet though since he'll curl up with our shoes or silly things like that, and I'm sure the balance board smells like feet? I dunno. lol But I got a picture of him on his "bed".
( You sure that is a bed? )

So tonight I started to completely resculpt the male head, since I'd completely wiped the face yesterday. He'd been my first head in this project, and I realized that I hadn't leached the clay for it. He's a bit trickier to work with because of that, but I don't feel like dismantling the entire head base to leach it so I'm just going with it.

So basically I sculpted the whole face from a blank slate and he's almost up to the same point as my two girl heads. I need to sculpt the second eye, work more on head shape and cheeks, finish sculpting the nose, etc. He's actually going pretty well! I am waaaay happier with how he looks now. I sort of think he looks like Sylvester Stallone, which I suppose works since he's supposed to be all buff. lol

( Progress for tonight! )

I was sculpting him while I watched Sherlock, the first episode! I'm rather excited about it! It's something that I've been meaning to watch. Scottie liked it too, which is awesome. Sherlock is toootally Eleven. xD And that's a good thing! Both things were written by Moffat, so I'm not surprised by the similarities. I think I can tell what kind of character he likes to write! lol

Oh, and the kitty decided that Scottie's outstretched legs were a couch to take a nap on. I thought it was adorable. xD
( Sleepy kitty! )

So after my intial stress about my grandparents property, I decided that I shouldn't let it stop me from having a nice weekend. I still need to figure out what's going on, but there's only so much I can do from here. :P That night Scottie cheered me up with a lovely dinner, cuddles, and game of Worms. Comedic mayhem is a good way to cheer me up, he knows me well. :3

I worked on sculpting tonight, but I didn't really finish enough to warrant a picture yet. I worked on the 4th head, mostly working on head shape and lip sculpting.

Yesterday I decided to do something a little different! We were at the thrift store last week, and while there I went to check for Monster High dolls. I've never seen one yet and I'm not exactly expecting to, but I still want to check! Anyway, I found a Mulan doll and I've always thought she was really cute! I decided to get her even though she didn't actually match anyone else. lol I wanted to take pictures but was all :/ because she has the old style Barbie legs and arms with only shoulder movement. I'm spoiled by MH and BJDs and couldn't think of what to do with her. I decided I'd do a head transplant onto a jointed body. I couldn't find any jointed doll bodies at the thrift store with pale enough skin though!

Scottie pointed out though that I have a couple of Liv dolls that I bought on clearance for their wigs for my CAMs, and one of them had really nice jointing and pale enough skin. I decided to do a head transplant!

Liv dolls have huge heads but they're actually slightly shorter than Barbies, so Mulan's head actually matches the body way better than the Liv head. Of course, now I have a floating Liv head and a headless Barbie body (though the body will just go to a Barbie customisation that had a broken neck).

I soaked both dolls heads in boiling water to soften up the vinyl, then used a knitting needle to get the head over the graple in the neck. Scottie helped me with the Liv head because my hands got soo tired after doing the Mulan head.
( Progress pics! )

She looks great though! She stands on her own and is so easy to pose! I love that she has double jointed knees. :D
( Showing off how well she poses! )

She needs a better outfit, what she came dressed in was a Mary Poppins dress which didn't really fit what I want her to look like! Not sure what to do with the dress. lol Right now she's wearing a random Liv dress I have. I might want to reroot her in the future too because her hair is a bit rough feeling.

Today I continued playing the Pathfinder path with Scottie as the DM! We made some maps, I'll have to post about how we did that later. It's getting late though so I can't get into that right now. I'm really enjoying playing with Scottie again though! He says he likes how I characterise the NPCs. :D
For lunch Scottie made lovely deviled eggs with shrimp! Diet food is awesome. lol
( Games and snacks! )

As a bonus, here's the kitty cuddling with Scottie on the couch. :D
( Sleepy kitty! )

So tonight I started working on the other two heads since I felt like changing things up would be good. :3 I'm actually kind of thinking that I'm going to pull the eyes out of the female head that I've been working on because I think they pushed a bit too far in and it's making it hard to make them look the way that I want. Also, the male face is supposed to look all manly and I want to sculpt something pretty. lol

Anyway, so the other two heads got my attention instead today! I worked on the lower half of the face mostly, and adding to the tops of their heads since they were a bit too low after working on them. I sculpted the noses (need some cleaning up), lips (also need work, but I could not stand the blocked in lips anymore lol), the nose bridges, the chin and cheek areas, and overall head shape.

I'm happy with the progress so far! I'm going to try and finish sculpting the lower half of those heads tomorrow, then perhaps work on the eyes and brow areas.

( Progress for today )

I also posted more ferret bathtime pictures! I had only posted Chaos before, but here's Gwin now! Also, the kitty makes a cameo. xD

( Gwin's bathtime photos! )

More to say but it will have to wait for tomorrow as I need to get to bed!

Yesterday I was pretty much out of it by the time I got home from work because I had seriously had a bad night of sleep. Part of the problem was that the ferrets were having a merry old time in the cage goofing around doing who knows what, and they were apparently more ichy than normal. So that made it really hard for me to get to sleep in the first place.

So I wasn't really in any frame of mind to sculpt, but I figured I could at least make the eye molds. I made the molds out of some scrap clay and different sized beads. Unfortunetly I realized after I'd baked the molds that I actually didn't have the beads in the molds that I actually needed for the head sizes that I am currently sculpting. e_e So I have eye molds for future figures, but none for right now. Oh well. xP I think that I'm just going to roll eyes like I did for the animal figures, I think they turned out alright. I'm not sure I have beads in the proper size, and I don't really have the funds to go out and buy more just for that.

I also made an eye stand, for painting eyes on before putting them in the figures. That at least worked out. lol
I haven't taken any pictures of those things, partly because they're not terribly exciting and partly because the eye mold isn't even applicable to what I'm making right now. lol

So I have sort of made progress. lol I didn't sculpt tonight, I'm still kind of tired and out of it. Tomorrow I'll sculpt some more!

Other kitty news! This morning the kitty was being rather adorable. I woke up to him literally hugging my foot. I needed to move, so I gently removed my foot from his sleeping self. Once I'd adjusted, he quickly moved so he could glomp my leg and then he went to sleep again. I went to sleep again and woke up later with him hugging my other leg. It is so funny. xD

Also, on Monday we had another earthquake. Before I moved to Alaska I'd never lived anywhere that had frequent earthquakes. Not anymore! I feel them often at work or at home and I hardly even notice. A couple of weeks ago we had a smaller one and my coworker was arguing with a different coworker that it was actually someone running down the hall. Of course, it was an earthquake, but that's how used to them we are. I now get the scene in Independence Day where the girlfriend of Will Smith's character says to go back to bed because the earthquake isn't even a 4 pointer. On Monday though I totally felt the quake and nobody was going to argue that it was someone running down the hall! It was a 5.8 located about 30 miles from town. It felt really freaky! I was still at work when it happened, and Scottie was there because it was just about time to go home and he was going to pick me up. He was hanging out in the breakroom, and after stuff stopped shaking I went to go to him, and he was coming out of the breakroom to come see me. I was glad he was there!
He said that explained the way the cat was acting before he left. Normally the cat is like velcro to us, and he's not a tree cat so you'll normally find him hanging out close to the floor. He had decided to go up into our loft bed and was trying to get under the covers. This isn't remotely normal behavior for him. lol

Also, what's up with this new update page? It's so strange! O_O I might even like it, but I've been using the old update page for years now! This is weird.

Last night I finished the fox sculpt's paint, and I'm rather happy with how he turned out! First I put down a coat of reddish brown paint as a base, then I put a darker brown stain over everything. I then put a reddish dry brush coat over that. Then I stained the inner ears and legs with black, then added the white markings and touched up the eyes with black.

The fox is my favorite so far! I've almost completed painting my bluebird, so that should be painted tomorrow! Then all that's left will be the Siamese cat! I'm almost done with the painting portion of my sculpting challenge, that's really exciting!

( A couple pictures of the paint in progress, and then the finished fox! )

An update on the kitty! He's been settling in here really well, and we're both really attached to him already! Yesterday evening we needed to bring him back to Animal Control to be neutered. I felt bad leaving him behind, but neutering is super important. After work today we picked him up and he's not at all down from his operation lol. I wasn't sure how he was going to react, but of course it's going to be more difficult to get him to take it easy than anything. lol He wants to play sooooo bad. Poor kitty. xP