"Don't Forget My Feet!"

Periodically, Tessie just plain wears out her hands and feet...That's when I get to play Doctor Frankenstein...If you could see me now, you would see a mad woman wringing her hands and grinning a lot.

She knows about the operation and participates in it gladly.... Hey!  Wouldn't you have brand new hands and feet, without any wrinkles if you could swing it?  I know I would.

I put her to work making stands to cook the new limbs on.  She is good at it.  She knows the right size for them.

The only trouble is, she assumes that I am going to make as many hands and feet as she makes stands, so she goes all out.

After eight stands, I had to take the chenelle stems  and  floral tape away from her.  I told her that, if she made any more, I would make the rest for Zar.  She stopped immediately!

I grabbed the stands and started.  I thought that you might like to sit in on the operation. 

The first thing that I do is make a kind of a paddle shape on one end of the piece of Super Sculpey and flatten the other end. 

Then I wrap the flattened piece around the stem. It is important to slip the clay off of the stand and back on once in a while, so it won't stick.

Next, I use an Exacto knife to cut three slits for the fingers.

I roll the fingers gently between my fingers.  They will elongate and must be trimmed.  When they are in preportion to the hand, I cut a piece of clay and roll it to the shape of the thumb with the pad below it.

You can see this directly to the right of Tessie in the photo. 

That gets smoothed into the hand to remove the seam. 

When I am satisfied with the length of fingers and thumb, I use the eye end of a needle to make indentations where the fingernails are.  Then I position the hand the way I want the finished pose to be.

About the time I finished taking the photo, Tessie started yelling...."You forgot my feet!  Make me some new feet now!  The old ones are dirty on the bottoms!"

I calmly started a new foot as I asked, "And who got the old ones dirty?  I know it wasn't me."

She just grinned and answered, "Stop fooling around.  I want new feet and make them Happy Feet!" 

She doesn't know how tempted I am to make her look like a tap dancing penguin...

See you tomorrow.  P.S.  Thanks to Elga, I think that I am getting the hang of this new system!  Thank You Elga!!!!!