How Daisy was made

By the end of the month I had turned her neck. I scanned pictures of it and #ed them so you can see the process:
#1 - I detatched first her head from her neck and then her neck from her body/shoulders. I used my dad's little saw (corner of saw shown in edge of picture - very small teeth!) to detatch them with. HINT: the closer you get to sawing the part totally off, or the closer you get to the end, the less pressure you put on the saw so the plastic doesn't break off all yucky! Then sand the new flat surfaces down with 150/250 paper to smooth it out.

#2 - Next I found some wire that's stiff but bendable and a drill bit that bit it right (I tested it out on some wood to see if the wire fit in the hole snugly and had to get even thicker wire so it had a good tight fit!). Then I drilled a hole in the middle of the neck surface I had sawed off and in the middle of the head surface had sawed off. I put the wire in the two holes, a little bend like a horses neck, with the head facing strait ahead, as seen in this picture.

#3 - I got the peice of metal to be the right length by first laying the body and head out together to where I thought it looked the correct length and cutting a peice of paper towel to fit the neck to what I thought looked right. I probably should have compared it to pictures to get the neck length perfect, but I just did it by eye. The paper towel thing *really* helped to get the wire the right length. So I cut the wire shorter, put the paper towel over to check if it was the right length yet, if not, cut the wire, checked, and so on until I got it just right! This picture is of the paper towel over peice on the neck - looks great!

#4 - Finally I bent the wire, plugged it in (attatched the head and neck together with it), deplugged it, bent it some more, plugged it in, deplugged it, bent it, tweaked it, played with it, and did just about everything to it until it actually worked. Then super glued the thick wire in place into the two holes. When that dried (it took FOR-E-VER) I then twisted soldering wire around the neck (this is shown in the two #4 pictures) to give it some thickness and give the epoxy something to hold onto for when I sculpted the neck.

After letting the glue dry for a few days I used epoxy to SHAPE the neck - no muscling/details yet. I had some extra epoxy that I used to make the main shape of her swishing tail - after cutting off most of her tail to a stub. Then I sanded the parts that needed sanding down, and sculpted the details on the neck. By 9/15/00, after quite a few tries, her neck and tail were done. Her tail is swishing and she's got most of her mane, too! It's very detailed - every hair is made with a little exacto knife! I was practically cross-eyed when I stopped, but it was worth it because it looks great.