May 31 - Boxers of Enduring Affection

"You will NOT break me. But I WILL break you. I will break you all."

~ Carl

Item Acquired: "Boxers of Enduring Affection"

Description: A testament to your unwavering commitment to comfort over convention, these undergarments, adorned with whimsical heart patterns offer no tangible benefits to defense or agility, they simply serve as a bold statement of your unique fashion sense and disregard for societal norms.  ... and your unpreparedness.  Okay.  Mostly it's the unpreparedness.

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Dungeon Crawler Carl is a book series by Matt Dinniman (@mattdinniman) full of heart, both the kind on these boxers and the "once was inside a person but is now being used to summon a wrath demon, watch out the floor is sticky" kind.  It's a fantastic story and the audiobooks have been my obsession this past month as I've caught up to the most recent.  Jeff Hays narration is like a chef's kiss delivery too.  He inhabits these characters, he ... crushes it.  Mmmm.

I mean how often is it that a book series makes you seriously consider getting a tattoo of a cat wearing [REDACTED] riding a [REDACTED]?   RTFB.  

May 30 - Praying Mantis Nymph

"Don't be fooled by the folded hands; the mantis is a master assassin."

~ BBC Earth (bonus points if you read in David Attenborough voice)

A praying mantis nymph isn't a larva - it hatches fully formed, just smaller, softer and wingless.  Then it immediately joins a sibling battle royale, where everyone suddenly looks like lunch.

If you've seen one up close, you know the stare - one inch of insect calmly wondering if you look like lunch too.

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This is a design from the Isopresso members section.  The tutorials are fantastic for practicing structure and learning techniques - but part of the fun I've been having is trying to spot where these techniques might have been used in their other jaw-dropping creatures.

(view other insects)

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Other balloons by and inspired by Isopresso:

May 29 - Morel Mushroom

"All mushrooms are edible, but some only once."

~ Czech proverb

Each of these tends to also be a bit of a fun research project.

I'm not a fan of mushrooms in general.  I won't pick them off a pizza, but I won't order one with them generally.  But mushrooming the .. sport? seasonal cult? fascinates me.

I love the idea of finding these beautiful little Willie Wonka colored morsels in the woods, like they were planted overnight by candy fairies.  They're a beautiful, wildly varied organism.

"Pretty sure it's not poisonous" is a bit too low on the confidence scale for something I plan to eat.

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This mushroom design is another Isopresso design from the members section.  I ended up building this a few times, it was a good exercise, like practicing scales - keeping a consistent size and pressure pairing throughout.  I messed up a few times during the final weave - it's probably easier to just build than to build optimized like this where keeping track of the different chains was important. 

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Other balloons by and inspired by Isopresso:

May 28 - Camel

"Camels can go many weeks without water, but they can't go a day without a grudge."

~ Terry Pratchett

Anyone know what day it is?   AWW YEAH!  

I'm honestly not sure what the :hump-day' camel was even selling come to think of it.   ... Wednesdays?   It wasn't Joe ... hmmm.

... or is it just brilliant advertising if I have to Google why a camel is talking about Humpday 10 years later?   Point to you, Geico - well played.

Isopresso had already built a fairly detailed camel, but this uses more of their advanced techniques.  I really like how the flower base stand adds a bit of leg separation and stability.  Trying to get this to stand up without such a base is like  a baby giraffe trying to stand for the first time, awkward and limb-y.
(view other camel)

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Other balloons by and inspired by Isopresso:

May 27 - Japanese White-eye

"Blossom by blossom the spring begins."

~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

This bird kind of looks like a repeat, I built a Tody bird based on the Kingfisher design, and this Japanese white-eye is fairly similar, but there are some differences - and not just geographically.

Instead of the sharp beak of a flycatcher, it has a soft bill.  Instead of a tropical itty-bitty chonk, it's sleeker and more streamlined.  And more notably, it has that distinct white eye ring that gives it a kind of permanent wide-eye surprise.

This design comes from Isopresso's members channel and shows a nice variation o the general bird form to suggest the White-eye.  If I build something like this again, I'll definitely double or triple-stuff the black pupil balloon to prevent distortion when adding outer layers.   It also helps keep the eye from bulging out like it's under balloon hypertension - especially when there's a tighter iris pressing on it.

(view other birds)

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Other balloons by and inspired by Isopresso:

May 26 - Japanese Spider Crab

Sacre bleu, what is zis?
How on earth could I miss
Such a sweet little succulent crab?

~ Les Poissons - The Little Mermaid

The Japanese spider crab is the largest in the world, with a leg span that can stretch over 12 feet.  It's basically all leg - the daddy-longlegs of the crab world? 

This design is from the Isopresso YouTube collection.  This was one of the more difficult balloons to photograph, I had the idea to present it like a museum specimen or a bug-collection pin board just to tame the unruly legs when building the second time, but didn't add pins for obvious reasons ...

(view other spiders or crab)

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Other balloons by and inspired by Isopresso:

May 25 - Tuftex Red

"When the war gets here
We're all gonna get on the level
Everyone will look a little bit nicer
When you finally meet the devil"

~ Jesse Welles - Red

I had the pleasure of meeting Marvin Hardy - legend of the industry, and a special guest at Bling Bling Convention 2018 (guessing year). In his talk, he mentioned going through "a bag of balloons a day". Not just on gigs - daily practice.  A hundred balloons.  Every day.  One Punch Man energy.

I have a few bags of different brands/colors that I've obtained with the intention (if not yet the motivation) to try out.  So here is the challenge, pick one, every week.  No rules other than that.  No goals other than this - use the bag.

Tuftex Red rover, Tuftex Red rover -- I dare you to ... lets just get on with this.

I didn't have a plan, so I just sort of noodled around some basic shapes. Honestly, kind of a slog fest at first, I don't have many same-color-multiple-260 builds in my pocket and I just finished that whole crab day which in hindsight would have been perfect.  The lobster is an Isopresso design that is mostly 260s.

Quick take:  Tuftex Red is easy to inflate, sits on the darker side of the red spectrum, and has just the barest of transparencies - very similar to the Sempertex red in that regard (blog has comparison images).  They seemed to take a decent bit of abuse without problem - I wasn't going crazy, but I certainly wasn't trying to be careful either.

 

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Other "color day" balloons:

May 24 - Capybara

"We are all just walking each other home."

~ Ram Dass

[The capybara comes ashore and into the tiny glen.]

[The pig flinches behind the brush, caught hiding ... hoping.]

[Somewhere close by, the sound of water rumbles louder - neither of them mistakes it for rain.]

[The pig takes a tentative step forward. Then another.]

[The capybara begins to turn back, giving a quiet nod to the space beside him.]

[He wouldn't give up on his little friend, and it was time to go.]

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Capybara design is from the Isopresso member section.  The text is obviously dedicated to the movie Flow .. where I learned that I love capybara.  

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Other balloons by and inspired by Isopresso:

May 23 - Goat

And if it looks a bit familiar
Like it did the other time
They say history don't repeat itself
No, history just rhymes.

~ Jesse Welles - Friends

There were five of them - a tribe of goats, that's the term.  Unruly, loud, invincible. 

He still walks those old paths now and then, just to remember.  The laughter.  The noise.  The way the world felt bigger when they were together. 

Probably time to go home.

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This goat follows an Isopresso design - getting a square slit on the eyes was an interesting exercise, I'm glad they are on either side of the face instead of looking directly at the camera because matching them would be rough.

(view other goats)

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Other balloons by and inspired by Isopresso:

May 22 - Camel Cricket

"There are no ugly creatures, only misunderstood ones."

~ Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard

Camel crickets don't have wings, they're the silent hairy weirdos lurking in basements and crawlspaces.  Field crickets are the ones you hear.   

Their bodies are arched ... like a camel ... and they have oversized back legs.  So big that they're sometimes mistaken for spiders, hence their nickname 'sprickets'.

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This is another design from the Isopresso insect series, and like the grasshopper, it uses a head technique I've come to enjoy - one of those "I have no idea what this is even supposed to be" moments that two twists later makes everything click into place.

(view other insects)

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Other balloons by and inspired by Isopresso:

May 21 - Head Lice

"The smallest parasite is still a predator."

~ Clive Barker

I am guessing your face is scrunched up into a "why would you even?" expression.  Mine did at least.  But this was on my todo list when mentioning lice-cream-cones yesterday, and I'm not sure there's ever a perfect time to show lice but I'm going to use the segue.. (ooo fun word!).

The insect design is great, the creepy of it comes from the bugs themselves.  A single pair can have hundreds of offspring within a few weeks - and if even a handful of those survive to adulthood, the exponential curve kicks in hard.

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This design is from the Isopresso members section, and is probably the closest I've ever looked at this insect.  My head feels itchy for it.

(view other insects)

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Other balloons by and inspired by Isopresso:

May 20 - Cones

Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide,
No escape from reality!

~ Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody

I am not sure if these were meant to be anything more than cute little snack cone creatures, but I certainly like how they are all smooshed together like they're about to sing Bohemian Rhapsody.  

Creative Balloon Handmade posted a bunch of these last week.  I think we've already established my poor impulse control around balloon groups and concepts.

Cute things are interesting in that it always sparks things in the opposite direction for me.  I'm not craving building a super cute panda next, I am thinking about snips and snails and puppy dog tails .. and ... monster baby heads?  Mutant sabertoothed zombie popsicles?  ..  Alien waffle cones!?

(view other ice cream)

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Other balloons by and inspired by Creative Balloon Handmade: