Covered in Glitter and Screaming

To celebrate the changing of the Chinese zodiac animal from rabbit (2022) to dragon (2023) I wanted to make a card that had some kind of reveal, particularly emphasizing the same head shape from one to the other.  Design process: Honestly this didn't end up quite as successful as I hoped it would be, but this is where I landed in the time that I had, and as it was they were pretty late. Next year is another opportunity!

Mystery gifts are my way of thanking some of the donors to a fundraiser I did a few years ago. I ask for a theme, and then I make a thing in as much secrecy as I can manage and send it to them. This particular theme was "dragons, dinosaurs, or dump trucks" because that's what was relevant to the child's interests. I went with dragons, because that is also relevant to my interests. THE HEAD I wanted to build the head around a baseball cap to avoid problems with sizing, since I am not physically near the recipient. I got hat and jacket sizes from a parent and crossed my fingers that I could get it all together before he outgrew those sizes. I saved myself a ton of time by starting with a  Wintercroft  mask template for the head. You do not have to be a pro artist to be able to assemble them, and they look amazing! Check them out. I knew I liked  this dragon head , but I also knew that I needed to make it smaller because they are designe...

I had so much fun making the Hawkman helmet in 2011 that I wanted to make something bigger the next year. My concept was the Chinese zodiac  Year of the Dragon . Body Construction   I started with some foam-wrapped heavy-duty wire and decently thick craft wire and made the skeleton. To add thickness, I surrounded the wire with soda cans stuffed with paper and added a foam ball as a placeholder for the head. Testing for size and wearability: It wasn't as thick as I wanted it to be, so I added packing peanuts and sheets of packing foam. This is where I should have worked out how to attach it to myself, but I didn't until later and it was a bit more difficult than it should have been. Note to self. Legs are made from cardboard boxes, paper, and duct tape. More on those later. The tail flourish was drawn paper, cut out of a yellow plastic binder, and glued to a shape that became the end of the tail. Scales With the basic structure in place, I ...