A lesson in planning and proper preparation.
On the day of the Virgin Mobile free fest I thought it would be fun for my son and I to try and make a Deadmou5 head for the show. I had some EL-Wire and thought how hard can it be we found an online how to  put together our shopping list and got started.

This is what we are trying to recreate.

During his performances the edge of the ears light up with blue el wire. Here is a snap shot from the show you can see the lights on Deadmou5 head.

This is the EL-Wire I had from another project this photo also shows the DC to AC inverter needed to light up the wire

I powered it with a 9 volt battery it worked but the brightness was a little off .

The how to we used called for a rabbet ball

In order to get it over my sons head we needed to make one of the 2 openings a bit larger but if you look closely you see the slots on the side of the ball  in my haste to make this cut I did not take this in to considration and cut right through them destroying the integrity of the ball witch I had to quickly patch together with duck tape.

I used very thin plywood from a craft store to make the ears I just free handed the ear shape thinking I could clean it up on the belt sander but the shape turned out pretty nice so we kept it to repeat it on the second ear I just traced it out and repeated it

A little light sanding to take the rough edges off.

One more pro tip USE A DUST Mask.

The mouth cut out was complicated by the screw up on the ball cutting but we worked through it. Placing a template on the ball to get a good placement you can also see the Styrofoam balls we would use for the eyes.

 

And a quick test fitting now on to covering it with red felt. I have little or no experience with fabrics and covering a ball turned out to be extremely difficult and rushing made things worse this is where planing and testing would have been put to good use but we had a show to get to in 2 hours.

First we covered the ears using spray glue and over sized pieces of felt and trimmed off the excess. This also gave me false hope the covering the ball would be a snap.

Covering the ball also took 4 hands so we did no manage to get any photos of this but trust me it was not the way to do it.

but here is the finished project.

Lessons learned on this project.

Plan out every step before you do it. Rushing to cut something is never a good idea plan your cuts in advance look for problems before you can not undo them. Give yourself time you are going to run in to
problems along the way and having time to step back and think it through or maybe have the time to ask someone with experience for advice is a good thing.

The biggest lesson I learned was making this project with my son was a great experience. I had a lot of fun sharing in something he was in to and we had a great time at the show and he got lots props from fellow fans. A lot of people wanting to take his photo and posing with him we even got a little media coverage

in this video you can see the el wire light up and blink.