My horribly embarrassing SUPERGLUE incident.

Occasionally I hear people say things like: "Wow, you do so much. How do you have time for all that?" Or..."You're like Supermom." To that I say...Psshhhhpt. Or something like that. Some people are really good about being able to spell the odd noises. Maybe its more of a hmmmppthhh. I don't know.

Anyway, I thought I'd share a really embarrassing story. You know, just to level the playing field.

So there I was....working on a sculpt at my kitchen table. I needed super glue to fix and a hole that I had in my silicone mold.  I.JUST.COULDN'T.GET.THE.LID.OFF!! Seriously, Superglue makers need to work on this.

It was a new container of glue with an "easy open" click system applicator. The directions were quite simple: 1. Turn the lid on the applicator clockwise until it stops clicking. 2. When it stops clicking turn it a full rotation counter clockwise.  Hmm.....easy enough.

Wait....Kid Check....Yep, still safely outside playing on our wobbly playhouse. Mental Note: Husband still needs to fix that. Oh well, maybe next summer. They don't weigh enough yet to cause serious damage if they fall anyway. On second thought....husband definitely needs to fix that.

Oh yes, back to the superglue.

It will not turn! What's this clicking sound I'm supposed to hear? Yep, nothing is happening. Further read instructions. Nope, I'm not missing anything. Turn.Click.Turn again.

Nothing.

It's now come to the time that I should use my teeth. Check the warning label: TOXIC. Definitely toxic. Oh no big deal, I'll just do it when my kids aren't looking. I wouldn't want them to learn to do anything stupid.

While using my teeth I think: "Oh there's the clicking sound! Yes, this is working. I can finish my project on time."

Check it to see if it works: Still doesn't. Really? Why is this difficult?

More twisting with my teeth.

Still doesn't work.

Hmmm....how many times is it supposed to "click"

Perhaps I should try.....ONE.MORE.TIME.

Click....Click.....Click.......................SHIT.

Mouthful of Superglue. FULL of Superglue. What did I do?

PANIC!!!  (of course)

It's all good though, I think my brain was prepared for something stupid to happen. I'd like to think that I'm clever and put together, but my life has been speckled along the way with little mishaps like this.  Soda can tops tend to rip off when I try to open them and cut me. Occasionally a crack pops up OUT OF NOWHERE while I'm walking. And, my little noggin is horribly misshapen with little bumps everywhere. I tell myself it's the natural shape of my head, but it's more likely from damage done along the way.

Back to the Superglue.....my brain knew I was in trouble and told my mouth to produce copious amounts of spit. Thank you Jesus! I grabbed a towel and was able to spit out most of it. However, just then my daughter walked in from outside....."Mom! Can we.....why is there a towel on your face?"

In my head..."Because I can't remove it!!!!!" Out my mouth...."Mommy got messy eating lunch. Go back outside. Do whatever you want."

I couldn't let her know what happened! First of all, she would probably repeat the unfortunate event. Secondly, kids are merciless. 

With the little miss gone I ran to the bathroom to check out the damage. Yep....partial towel attached to face (AND...it was a kitchen towel. GROSS! I think it had food on it.) Half my lips were stuck together and I just noticed that I was still clutching the bottle of Superglue. Well, more like I couldn't let go of the bottle of Superglue.  -(ACK!)-

I had to fix this before my handsome husband discovered my ineptitude. But, how do you remove Superglue and unstick your lips when one of your hands is still stuck to the Superglue! -(DOUBLE ACK!)-

Needless to say...I eventually scraped most of it off and escaped complete and total humiliation! That is.....until I decided to add a humility notch to my belt and post this on the internet.  Mehhh.....

Stone Cold!

Today was a beautiful Spring Day! Perfect for bike riding, sidewalk chalk, and making a stone replica of my husbands face. You know, normal stuff.

This post is a continuation from A Body Double for My Husband, and shows exactly what we've done with what my friends have called "the purple blobby thingy". As usual, our kids were involved. This still doesn't mean they helped. At one point they ran off with ALL of my chip brushes and I had to chase them down. Yes, VERY helpful.

Oh here they are with my chipbrushes:

AND with Daddy's silicon mold of his head:

Side Note: The above photos have not been altered in Photoshop. My husbands head really is that large. HENCE...the need to create custom prosthetics. Oh, and don't worry about me hurting his feelings. I'm sure if you asked him he would tell you that he needs all that head space to accomodate his massive brain. Or, how he commonly refers to it: AWESOMENESS.   ---(oh boy)---

I've been learning how to create "Garage Monsters" by watching step-by-step instructional videos from the Stan Winston Special Effects Make-up School online. Those of us who create out of our homes (becuase we don't have studio space) take special pride in our ingenuity. 

For example: My deluxe mold making set-up. Only the best for this girl! (5 gal home depot bucket)

We poured in the UltraCal 30 and used burlap to strengthen the edges and weak spots. Here is Jon helping me rotate the product. My skinny little arms just couldn't take it. Big thanks to my big tough husband for the help!

We let it set for a few hours and spent some more quality time with the kiddos riding bikes. My little man can almost do two wheels all by himself. We just need a little more work on the crashing...er...um....stopping. Below: The kids and I releasing the mold straps to reveal our hard work:

TADA!! My Stone-Faced husband! (I have to admit, it's totally creepy!)

 So's this:

And this:  (HI DADDY!!)

 How does he look on our mantle?

Just kidding! We stuck him in the garage behind the excercise equipment we never use, but next to the home-brew (Beer) equipment we use frequently. Meh....priorities.

Another Side Note: The amount of "filtering" I had to do for this post was ridiculous. Everything I wrote sounded dirty and I had to re-write it. BAHHH!

Next up....sketches and body painting. It's been a busy week!

WHY am I a SyFy Mom?

Why am I a SyFy Mom? I've been getting this question a lot since I started this blog. Because I love it! That's why! My husband and I have been into Halloween for a long time, long before we had children. When you have kids sometimes it takes away from the time you can invest into your hobbies. We didn't want that to happen, so we involve them in as much as possible. I don't want this to be something that only I do. I want it to be something that WE do. Besides, plaster molds, sculptures and hydrocal can be heavy...as my son gets older I'm going to put him to work! Soon, my daughter will be able to help me apply base coats and primers. We'll turn this into a business in no time. (At this that's the dream.)

I have a TON of things in the works coming up. I'm assisting with hair and makeup on a friend's RAW Artist showcase, I have my own showcase coming up in June, and a potential film project. I can't wait to share all of those things with you. But for now, in the spirit of #tbt (Throwback Thursday for all you newbies out there). I'm going to rewind 6 years to one of my early makeups. I still wasn't very good yet and hadn't learned many of the technical skills that I now have, but it's important to me because it was our first-ever family makeup event. This makeup was truly when SyFy Mom was born!

My husband bought a foam latex mask online that you can purchase HERE. I was pretty much clueless and had little to work with. Back then, we still had the Costume Shop around and I purchased Ben Nye cream makeup. I had this picture that they sent with the mask as a reference, and did the best I could:

Beware!! These pics are NOT great! We had a simple point and shoot camera and crappy supplies. But hey....everybody starts somewhere. Here is the before pic of my husband:

Next came the mask. The edges are supposed to be clear, but they are yellow in the picture do to using the wrong materials. Mehhh, oh well.

Base Coat:

Shading and Horns:

Darker Shading and Finished Look: (If I could go back in time I would add much more realistic shading)

But, I would be a SyFy Mom if I didn't incorporate my family right? So this is where the fun comes in. I was about 7 months pregnant with my son at the time and was so excited to have a BIG BELLY in time for Halloween. I was tiny at the time (only about 120 lbs before getting pregnant) so my baby had nowhere to go but OUT! I had the roundest basketball belly ever! I jumped at the chance to have my friend Christa the Art Major come paint my belly. See, she's redeeming herself from my last posting. This is where her Art Major definitely helped out! I wanted it to look like I was carrying my Devil Husband's spawn. I wanted the little baby devil to be causing all sorts of mischief and poking me with a spear. We didn't want to offend too many people, so I asked her to draw him cute and cartoon-ish.
Her rough sketch: (all free-hand!)

Final Result: (Christa the Art Major has some mad skillz)

Sorry for the gross belly button! Do I need to post a warning for mature-content on this blog? I suppose some of you would get squeamish. Sissys.

Side note: This sketch on my belly took forever!! My son would get super squirmy at night and my belly wouldn't stop moving. We had to take multiple breaks. At one point the entire shape of my stomach changed and went lop-sided. I love the human body!

The final look:

Every time I see this picture I think: We Rock! I mean, seriously, I swear being made up like this is the only time I feel cool. Most of the time I run around in my well-worn mom jeans and ballet flats. Boy do I clean up!

More questions I get: "Do I think I can make money with this? Where will this go in Boise, ID? You do realize you live in Boise, right?--Not Los Angeles."  Yes, of course I know I live in Boise. Best city EVER!! Just ask Time Magazine. Or check pretty much any Top Ten List for cities of superior awesomeness. I'm 95% sure we will NEVER move. I love it here. I want to LIVE here. LOVE here. RAISE my family here.And I'm pretty sure I want to DIE here. So, is there a place for this in Boise? I don't know. I'm currently on a super-charged Amazon Woman WARPATH to find it.

I will say this: BOISE....you are slacking. I've been to your art shows, fashion shows and major events. I've seen your so called avant-garde makeups. NO. It's time. Talent is here in this city. I know several makeup artists that are extraordinary. Event coordinators, directors, and anyone responsible for the execution of these events need to start saying YES! Boise, your people are ready. We're hip and cool. We want creativity! No more craft store foam ears and safety pinned tails on your animal stage makeups. No more bad acrylic flaky paint on body makeups.  And.........done.

Oh wait.........BAMMM!!!!

A Body Double for my husband

I've been doing creature makeup with my husband now for about 8 years. Most of the time we buy foam latex prosthetics for my husband for Halloween and I then transform him into something scary. What is a foam latex prosthetic? A facial prosthetic is a soft and flexible appliance that can be bonded (that sounds scary, it's just glue) to a persons face. Most of the time the prosthetics start out white and you have to paint them to achieve your desired look. Here is an example:

Latex appliance (raw) without paint:

 Latex appliance after 5 hours of Painting:

Anyone can achieve a look like this with a little time and practice.

Often, masks might not fit my husband perfectly. Seriously, we joke about is caveman bone structure all the time. Why doesn't he just be a caveman for Halloween anyway?  So, after YEARS of using appliances that SORT OF fit my husband we decided to make our own. And this....is where the fun begins!!

To make our own we needed to make a cast of his face to form a NEGATIVE. We accomplished this using SMOOTH ON  Standard Set Body Double Silicone.

You can find a helpful tutorial of FaceOFF's Frank Ippolitio demonstrating how to use this product HERE.

I needed a few helpers for this project. Since my 3 year old and 5 year old each possess about 2 years of experience in special effects makeup (more than anyone else I know) I decided to enlist their help.

They were useless. Just useless! It's so hard to find good help these days. I decided to use my "phone a friend" option for a little more help, and got some awesome assistance from my friend Christa the Art Major. Here's a little known fact: being an Art Major doesn't seem to help much. Anyhoooooo, we came up with this:

And, miraculously, this IS what it's supposed to look like. The question I get the most when people see this picture is "Can he breathe?" Ummm....no. He can't. He can hold his breath for a really long time. 

Wait, what? 

Just kidding. All fun aside, if you are going to attempt something like this you must thoroughly educate yourself before proceeding so that your LIFECAST does not become a DEATHCAST. (duh)

I often think about the kind of lifestyle that my kids have inherited. What types of traditions are they going to have in their own households? Will they be lucky enough to find spouses that will help them apply their foam latex appliances? I hope so. For now, I just hope that they think their SyFy mom is pretty cool. I'm pretty sure they think their Dad is pretty cool. Check it out. They look happy, right? I better not be screwing them up for life. 

Next step> >>The Plaster Cast. Silicone doesn't hold its shape well and needs a "support shell". It looks a little something like this: (See the little nose holes? Safety first!)

This was so much fun! The kids had a blast. To be honest, we couldn't really keep that much of an eye on them during this time. Jon, of course, was of no help at all. Poor Christa doesn't have kids and looked terrified (they had kid-goo on them). And I, well, my hands were covered in plaster. So, they were super happy with their snack cups full of Cheerios and some Kindle Kid-Friendly Apps. No judging...your kids will come home and tell you how much cooler we are than you. Just sayin'.

Another benefit of this whole experiment? My handsome hubbs is immortalized forever! FOREVER!!!!! MMMWHAHAHAHAHA!

A SyFy Mom is Born!

Hi! My name is Lana. This is me:

 And...so is this!

I'm a SyFy mom, and my kids love it. So does my husband. But...he probably thought the ape-women in "Planet of the Apes" were hot (they had boobs too). Actually, it was my husband that started my infatuation with everything special effects. He's always been Halloween CRAZY! He had a giant halloween tub full of props and special effects makeup before I even met him. Add me into the picture and our stash of goodies has grown to overwhelming our attic space. Add two kids, a Saint Bernard, and an Australian Shepard later and there you have it....SyFy MOM!

Stay tuned into this blog. Watch me as I sculpt and create. My kids are going to get their hands dirty too. I'm determined to rise to success in little Boise, ID. I WILL do it....just watch me :)

My NEXT POST: Watch me lifecast my husband's head. The kids and I are going to create him in stone. Next I'll sculpt a pretty gnarly face for him. What do you think? Make him an orc? An elf? An animal? I'm open to suggestions.

Oh...and meet my husband:

He's so very handsome! Wouldn't you say?