Dandelyon's Worlds

I'm not sure what they made the walls with at Dragon's house, but they're harder than the plaster in my old Victorian.  Lots harder.  The first attempt to drill holes that would hold the plastic thingies that came with the cubes failed miserably, and I ended up patching the holes with fresh-mixed plaster and we started again an inch higher.

Here's Dragon hanging the first cube!

Next I worked on one of the 3-D branches.

Yeah, that's some plaster there, to help the curve of the stick.  There's some on the second (and last) stick we got mounted.  Apparently Dragon's husband likes to burn hardwood in his fireplace.  The drill bits didn't so much drill as burn their way through the wood, slowly.    It took long enough that the plaster I'd mixed was almost too set to use at all by the time I got to the second stick.

Dragon has promised to paint over the plaster once it dries.

Some things you only learn once you try them--the cages will clearly need chains, so they hang free!  And apparently Spooky gets a key to the city too.

Yes, that's two different things hanging from the same stick.  It's still a work in progress.  Witness the blue painter's tape that's protecting the wood of the doorways and floor edging.

In other news, I'm working on a science fiction short story involving polar bears, an amphibious robot, and the North Pacific Gyre. 

I want to finish it--and the snippet I started today that arose from a picture of gorgeous multi-colored yarn--before the Muse Fusion on Sunday.

And I'll finish this post with two more pictures of the mural, adjusted to different light levels so you can see different parts of the details.  The human eye is still more sensitive than the camera (or at least than the cell phone).  Go figure!

Spooky's birthday party is drawing nigh, and my sister Dragon's house isn't all decorated yet. To say nothing of the fact that making half of a bedroom a painting zone for a month does nothing positive for a person's ability to make a bedroom presentable.  Spooky's second attempt at doing windows is much better than the first one (which I somehow neglected to photograph).

Spooky is quite talented, really.  But she's only worked in pencils, pen, and/or photoshop, not with paintbrushes.  And the techniques are definitely different.  One of these days, if she wants, I'll refer you to her Deviant Art page.

So, while she did that and I worked on a different house, my sister Dragon added more branches to the big tree--the low branches; she was tired enough to not want to paint standing on a ladder or chair.  And I admit, I am in favor of not having my sister fall down and break her neck!

The next morning, I finally got to doing the proper detail work on the pine tree, and (while Spooky went to an interview that I can hopefully brag about later) then on a whim, added some moss to the big tree. 

I do like how the tree looks in this photo, like it's tip-toeing through the sky.  But leaving it that way wasn't in the plan. 


So, while I worked on finishing the hill behind the houses, Dragon added grass under the tree, and we talked.  One of her lawyer-friends, on seeing my picture, said, "That's you!"  There's definitely a family resemblance, though her hair is shorter.  Another friend was dismayed that she didn't go to him and get canvasses to put on the walls, rather than painting on the plaster, so the mural could be preserved forever.

It's getting late as I type this, and I do have to go to work early in the morning, so I think I'll leave you with the detail of the hill behind the houses, and leave the rest for tomorrow's post.

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In other news, I was going to remind everyone that the next Muse Fusion is tomorrow, but Ellen's computer got sick recently (dang viruses), and the resulting work to get rid of the infection and get her tiny computer empire running smoothly again has left her pretty wiped out. Since one of her rewards for all the work she does is to be able to interact with readers and write stuff people asked to read, I was all for delaying the Muse Fusion until Sunday when she suggested doing so. Besides, I'm back working full time (it was a girl), so Sunday works much better for me!

So, Muse Fusion on Sunday! I hope to see you there!

And another update is here.

As I remember, I left off at about the time we ran out of brown paint. It's hard to finish a brown tree without brown paint. So my sister Dragon and our friend headed off to the craft store while I dry-brushed more cloud details. After a while, I wanted to escape the paint fumes, and headed outside. She called to consult, and to let me know she was stopping at the grocery store for dog food. She told me she was bringing home a surprise for the room.

Eventually, we had dinner and went to visit the Great Aunt, and I got to show off the progress pictures and see the surprise -- little cages to hang from the tree. We'd already planned to hang little knick-knack cubes from the tree (they came off the wall that now has the huge moon on it).

"So, how will you hang them from the wall?" asked the practical Great Aunt.

Dragon admitted she hadn't figured that out yet.

I asked if she had any wooden shelf-brackets, figuring we could carve them into branches.

No.

"How about big sticks?"

Dragon's husband likes to have fires in their fireplace. So they have a supply of sticks.

We headed back to Dragon's house, where everyone admitted to being too tired to even play magic, and there was sleep.

The next morning, breakfast was interrupted by the normally quiet dog getting loudly excited on the back porch.  Investigation revealed she was worrying about the menacing dragon pinata that was apparently about to invade the yard--the next door neighbors were having a kid's birthday party!  The dog was seriously worried!

Having left my wood carving tools in Milwaukee, I asked after Dragon's.  "They got packed away when we sent Dad and the boys off camping and Spooky (The Niece informed me that "The Niece" is a very boring name for her in my LJ) to camp and got the whole house (saving only the kids' rooms) painted this summer."

Eventually, I found an exacto blade and Dragon found a hand saw, and I attacked the sticks.  These are the resulting tree extensions, with flat spots to be screwed into the wall.  We'll paint them to match the tree.

While I did this, Dragon and Spooky worked on hanging "fluffy" (a humongous home-made spider) and making her a new web over the front porch.  I thought I'd saved a picture of that, but it's not in my phone, so you'll have to wait for another update for that.

Eventually there was dinner, and then cards  (Spooky was very pleased to be allowed to play my Squirrels deck against two dragon decks), and I had to head home so the car would be here for My Angel's doctor appointment on Monday.

So no pictures of whole walls today. 

More next time!

This is last night's update--I was too tired when we got brushes cleaned to do any of the things I'd planned. Comes of being wakened early by the insurance guy who I expected to call on Friday (his voice mails were not working right), and then driving to Chicago in a car with no air conditioning at midday in mid-summer heat.

The window detail is brightened enough for you to see who's in the house; it's a little darker in person.

And the texture that works so nicely for the tree and clouds is a real pain for houses and windows!

The "moon" in the tree limbs is an illusion caused by where the ceiling light was shining on the wall--but I really like the illusion!

We had another friend who dropped by to talk, who actually tried painting.  that was fun.

 But I think what's best is having a teenager who keeps smiling and saying "I like it", "this is great" and "thank you!"

Oh, yeah, the (as yet incomplete) tree:

  

Another update, and a surprise dragon, follows.