MST3K and an Owl Theremin

Tuesday was a good day for this sunshine cupcake. I received my first Etsy purchase in the mail: these fine polymer clay earrings of Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo from the show Mystery Science Theater 3000, thanks to Lauren at the Clay Collection!

Also, last night we drove over to Athens (about an hour and half drive from here) to see our friends Lauren's and Craig's band The Buddy System. Not only does the band dress in CMYK, but they also have an owl-theremin hybrid.


Craig and Lauren are also the 2-person animation studio Kangaroo Alliance and do all of the accompanying visuals for each Buddy System song..You may have seen their video for Of Montreal's "Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games".

C'mon, Lobstee!

This weekend, at Sunshine Cupcake, Nathan made a very special figurine for my good friend Sam, whom I've known for about 20 years. At least 15 of those years have been spent quoting the Simpsons ad nauseum. In honor of Sam's birthday, Nathan made me a very special lobster harmonica from the "Team Homer" episode (in a very short amount of time!)

We might try making another with a real harmonica in it.

Prototypes

I thought I'd post some prototypes that didn't make it to the Etsy shop for one reason or another.


This guy was my first attempt at making a little monster dude out of polymer clay. At this point I hadn't unpacked my rubber-tipped clay-shaping tools yet, so I had to make due with some crappy metal ones meant for kiln clay. I much prefer shapers like these:

The rubber smooths the polymer clay so much better than metal tools, which tend to tear the clay. So the detail in this guy wasn't as smooth as I would have liked. I like his design though.


Apology Cake is one of my favorites, I'm definitely going to make this guy again. I love Mona's Emoticake® designs. This guy took many hours and there are little things that aren't as smooth or neat as I'd like. The icing piping was made with liquid Sculpey I like the dimensionality it has but it didn't go on as cleanly as I wanted. Next time I'll paint it on or something. I'll have to do some tests to see what works best. I also didn't finish the bottom, so it's kind of sloppy down there. That's just ugly. Even though you wouldn't see it unless you picked it up, I still want the whole thing to be as finished and professional-looking as I can make it.



This dude's psyched. I was playing with flexible Sculpeyand he was more of a proof-of-concept test. His arms bend, but not all that easily, maybe they're too thick. I also didn't clean all the red off my fingers before making the white eyes, so he looks a bit stoned. Anyone want a stoned octopus?


I wanted to make a Fizgig tribute of basically a Mouth with teeth. Maybe some eyes. I still like the idea, but i need to work on the execution more. I tried slicing the teeth out and recessing the mouth, but it didn't quite line up the way I planned. In my mind. Where I plan.





Rar.

I wish these were *my* little ponies!

Our friend Emilie sent me this great link of nerdy My Little Ponies by Spippo on deviantart.com Why didn't I think of this first? Sigh...

Meet Gaspar, the Day of the Dead Glow-In-The-Dark Skull

Gaspar the Day of the Dead Glow-In-The-Dark Skull (cropped), originally uploaded by alienate.

In case you haven't noticed, we sunshine cupcakers love pretty much everything associated with Halloween including skulls. Initially, I made myself a cute little skull out of glow-in-the-dark sculpey but wanted to make something more colorful and "over the top." These days, you see skulls just about everywhere, even on your toast,
so, I did a little research about sugar skulls (calaveras de azúcar.) Sugar skulls are made in celebration of the Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos) which takes place the day after Halloween. Visually speaking, they're basically the drag queens or showgirls of the undead (in a word: gaudy or.. amazing).
Unfortunately, I lack both patience and supreme sculpey skills, so Nathan ended up doing most of the details (ok, all of them. I just made the skull itself.) The coolest part is the "bone" of the skull and the teeth glow in the dark! Grab Gaspar in our etsy store.