Happy last year of the decade, everybody!





I used some of my old dolls for this task. As they lacked electronic components, I couldn't hack them in one sense of the word. I could, however, hack them in a more traditional way:



It was really tough plastic. I had to use a big-ass knife and a kitchen cutting board.


The first toy I modified was a Barbie-esque Sailor Jupiter doll. She was already an amputee with a missing right leg, so I decided to make the best of it by turning her into a mermaid.



I accomplished this using a few rolls of tape (masking tape for building the tail, duct tape to make it green) and a small piece of cardboard (for the tail fin). Tape skills are probably the single most important thing I brought away from my brief stint as a wannabe graphic designer. We'd get assignments where we had to make (random object)...ENTIRELY out of (unlikely material). In one memorable case, the random object was a massively scaled-up model of a wind-up toy mouse and the material was masking tape. After that, most other tape-related crafts seem quite undaunting.

Anyway.



This one is a single toy modified to be a somewhat different toy, rather than some wildly altered Frankensteinian aggregation of miscellaneous toy parts, so it doesn't quite fit the task. Therefore, I decided to make a second one that didn't quite fit the task in a slightly different way, hoping that together they'd make up the difference.



This parasitic fetus-head sculpture is made out of the lopped-off limbs of an old, long-neglected baby doll (actually my younger brother's originally, not mine) and a plaster mannequin head from the 1920's or 1930's (or so I guess). The mannequin had originally been painted with dark brown skin, black hair, and bright orange clown lips (!), and was truly hideous. I wish I'd remembered to take a picture before I started painting it.

I rescued the head from the trash. Or I stole it. Depends on your point of view, I suppose. On the one hand, it was in the back of a dresser drawer in someone's attic and I snuck it out of the building in my knapsack without asking if I could take it. On the other hand, my job was to sneak stuff out of this person's house and throw it in the dumpster. In this instance, I just happened to skip the throwing it in the dumpster part. You make the call.

The head served as a pretty decent bookend for about two years before this task came along.



I decided that New Year's eve would be a good time to ensure that my creations would be played with. I put the mermaid next to some fairy tale books in the children's section of the local used bookstore. I'm hoping she'll be picked up within a couple of days.



I wasn't quite sure what to do with the parasitic fetus-head sculpture (which isn't exactly a toy, even though it's made from toy parts). I wandered around with it tucked under my arm for a while, watching the New Year's parade, gathering askance looks from passerby. Eventually I ran into a casual acquaintance from high school, who complimented the head. I asked him if he'd like to keep it. He said he didn't have any money with him. Surprised, I reassured him that he could have it for free, but only if he really wanted it.



He took the head. Last I saw, he was showing it off to his girlfriend, which made me pretty happy.