I got stuck into it this Christmas break to try to finish the lion head. There’s no deadline for it but it’s been sitting as an unfinished project for some time now and now that I have time, I better make a move on it. Especially as I see the end in sight. I got busy with using metal wire to secure the fur in place and I’m loving what I’m seeing. Out of the whole lion, there was probably one part which stood out to me that I didn’t like and that was my metal wiring for the eyelids. I miscalculated the length of the wire so the eyelids are a little on the smaller size compared to the eye. With the eyes closed, you can still see eye coming through. I was hoping with the eye bristle fur on, it’ll make it less noticeable and if all else fails at least the eye is usually open at rest (once I secure the elastics on).

The next step is to secure the bristle fur onto the lion but I couldn’t help myself and start arranging the pom poms. They’re double thickness so they really do look and feel “full” and vibrant. I was really worried that the lion being a gold and red lion was lacking redness to it but after playing around with the pom poms I think it’ll look great.

Slowly slowly getting there. I’ve made myself some free time to keep working on the lion. I hot glued the metal discs on and the fur. With the last two lions, I only put a small dab of hot glue on one edge of the discs and even though those lions haven’t even been performed in get, just carrying them around and accidentally knocking them around has meant that the discs have gone flying off. So this time, I’ve made sure to use more glue and applied the hot glue around the circumference of the discs so they’ll stay on permanently. For the fur, I decided to use faux fur. It doesn’t look as pretty as rabbit fur but it’s probably a little more animal friendly and what I’ve found with rabbit fur is over time, the fur tends to fall off the skin. I prepared the faux fur in the same way as I would have with the rabbit fur. I cut it into strips with the fur running perpendicular to length of the strip.

I also tried my hand at Chinese calligraphy. I must say, cudos to the professional writers and artists because it isn’t easy! Trying to make it nice and fat to fit out the zhao pai whilst keeping it neat was difficult. It looks a little childish but at least it’s my hand!