January-March 2014

     After the excitement of Christmas and my friend's daughter receiving her new monofin and her plain, fitted tail it was time to embark on a completely new tail!  I sat down with this 7 year-old and asked what she wanted her tail to look like.  Confidently, she said she wanted her tail to look like Merliah's tail from Barbie in a Mermaid Tail 2.  She showed me which one, and having seen the movie, I was familiar.  I asked to borrow the movie and watched it time and time again to get a sense of how she moves around in the animation and how it is displayed in different lighting.  This little girl wasn't going to get a copy of the tail, I wanted her to have an EXACT replica!  The real deal!  It took a lot of planning, but I was going to make her mermaid dreams come true! 
     After many, many, many, many hours of painting, my deadline was coming close.  It needed to be finished by April.  Luckily, I didn't run into anything unexpected, but I was trying some new techniques with paint and materials after having done some test strips in water.  Photos of this tail as well as many other "firsts" can be seen in the April blog!  :-) 
     I had a birthday party for a special little three year-old.  I finally got to make it to Waimanalo Beach! It is a beautiful, turquoise beach--ideal for mermaids).  However, water was out of the question as the birthday girl wasn't yet accustomed to the ocean like her soon-to-be mermaid friend.  I presented her with a mermaid headband specific to mermaids and rainbows as she has a unique story regarding mermaids painting rainbows in the sky. 
     We picked up trash on the beach, and I explained to them the importance of picking up trash: that it is harmful to the ocean's animals, and we need to protect them by picking up trash.  Later on, my mermaid assistant told me that he had seen one boy from the party go off on his own at one point and bring back a piece of trash to put in my trash can.  So happy he made the correlation!  While this was going on, I was busy with the other children, painting scales on each of them to have a perfect mermaid look!  It was a wonderful day!  :-)

To see more photos from this party, check out my Facebook album: https://www.facebook.com/MermaidLindaStephanie/photos/a.367064836766410.1073741832.172686059537623/367065243433036/?type=3&theater