**I'm not being compensated by anyone mentioned in this post. I've had some really wonderful advice given to me throughout all this by some awesome people. Some of the photos are linked to their websites as a way to say thank you.**
My friend Danielle has a robot leg and it's one of the coolest things I've ever seen. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing cool about how she ended up with what we've all come to know lovingly as "Robot Leg", but since she said adios to the lower half of her right leg she's been kicking butt and taking names. I met Danielle shortly before her osteosarcoma diagnosis way bay in 2010. I'm not going to go into details because that's her own personal story but let me reassure you it was a long journey to March 25,2014. That's the day my friend took on the mantle of The Bionic Woman. My friend and I probably get along due to our constant need for color and uniqueness. And while having a prosthetic was defiantly unique it was boring. There's not much color on them and there's often a shiny metal rod flashing around for everyone to see.
This is the second cover I've done. The fist one was all white with a texture similar to canvas and was fashioned back in 2014 by Scott Sabolich Prosthetics. The new one is all black and has a leather like feel to it and is made by Hanger Prosthetics in Dallas. Since Danielle lives in Texas and I'm in Colorado we attempted to face time in order to get an idea of what she was looking. I love these covers so much because it's like being back at the tattoo shop and figuring out a person's styles and ideas. This brings to mind a wonderful quote "Nobody is boring. If you find someone or something a bore, the fault lies in you."After several attempts on skype and Facebook messenger the idea of a phoenix was thrown around along with flowers. So off to researching and sketching I went.
What started out as a generic search for a normal run of the mill phoenix for reference turned into interesting research.
Most people know the phoenix as the mythical bird who rises from the ashes and is reborn. What surprised me was how this bird was rooted in so many different cultures. From the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and of course most of the oriental regions like China and Japan. Even the Jewish faith is known to believe the phoenix was one of the only creatures allowed to stay in the Garden of Eden because it was the only animal to not consume the forbidden fruit.
I found all of these different cultures, each with their own version of how the bird should be portrayed. Chickens, eagles, cranes: all giving the bird the lifespan of no less than 500 years. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I firmly believe that there are common threads that run throughout history. When all these threads have similar qualities how can you say that such a bird didn't exist to an extent? Maybe a prehistoric version of a dodo bird for all we know. A dinosaur maybe? Don't some people believe chickens are dinosaurs? (They lay eggs and have feathers. Dinosaurs had feathers. http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/newly-discovered-fossils-hint-all-dinosaurs-had-feathers/)
After some reading I decided to go with the Chinese phoenix as it was more colorful, docile, represents justice and graciousness and intolerant of lies and abuse of power, plus it was the most colorful bird of them all. **Fun fact. The Chinese phoenix was often represented as the Empress and was commonly seen with a Dragon which represented the Emperor and only seen during times of peace and prosperity and would leave treasure where they would rest. (There's a lot of cool facts here if you want some spare reading later. -->>https://gbtimes.com/legend-chinese-phoenix) ** Danielle threw out the idea of flowers and we talked about daisies, sunflowers, lilies, passion flowers, but in the end I went with Dessert sage and fireweed since they are the first flowers that come back after a major fire and passion flowers for a more personal reason for my friend.
The material on this cover was much easier to work with vs. the first cover I painted, but any little bump would cause all my painting to rub off which actually proved helpful for the flames and coals at the bottom. Danielle is active and is constantly going so after spending an ungodly amount of time at Home Depot trying to find the right sealant I finally went with the Minwax Polycrylic. I was a little worried that it would give the cover a milky white coating after pouring through reviews of it but that seemed better than the yellowing polyurethane can lend. I was also worried that the polyurethane and a coin battery wasn't what I wanted to put near each other. Flammable bad. Melting I can handle.
From the start of this project I was determined to make this thing light up and I didn't care how. When I finished the first cover I told myself I would do lights the next chance I got. I've done some dabbling in paper circuits and figured the same principles should apply right? Plus the circuit look would tie in nicely with the phoenix theme in a bionic rebirth way. I ran over to Mountain States Electronics and bought a few supplies and got a ton of help from the owner. I got home eager to dig into my new electronics.I may have been a little overzealous though as I started to put all my copper tape down before realizing that mapping it all out would have been a better idea. I ended up making a mistake and while I thought the polycrylic had cured in enough time, it didn't, and a huge chunk of sealant came up with the copper when I tried to fix it. oops.. Luckily it was a smaller piece and not the fully painted piece! After almost ripping all that work off I decided it was better to leave it alone for a day to really cure before venturing further.
I grabbed some tiny yellow LEDs at a computer store here in town and started putting lights on the next day. Finally the moment of truth, put a coin battery in test it out! Boom! Lights! Yes! This is possible!
Next issue to resolve, how am I going to keep the battery on it? I'm an instant gratification kinda gal and was disappointed when no one in town had anything I could use. I didn't want to order a battery holder on amazon and wait. It couldn't possibly be that hard to figure something out right? I tried hot glue, silicone, paper, cloth, elastic. I Leave it to Facebook to have my answer.
I saw a post from our local library showing off their new 3d printer. How cool would it be to have a 3d printed piece on here?! This was perfect!
I found a coin battery holder project on the library's links and submitted my project and waited for my email saying it was time for pick up. It didn't take to long to wait, about 5 days. Probably longer than amazon I'll admit it. You'd think I would have taken those 5 days to problem solve how I would install this. You know, when I had time. But life gets busy and it's easy to forget you can't rush things all the time. It's okay to give yourself a little slack especially when you're just trying to live through every day. When I got my battery holders, I was stuck wondering how the heck I was going to put this on. All the copper tape I used was taped down to the leg cover and since I didn't wait for the sealant to cure all the way I couldn't peel the tape up without compromising all my work.(Rushing does that to you, but what can I say? I'm impatient.) I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to avoid the inevitable fact that I was going to have to cut some of the copper up.
and I needed to make sure that this thing could turn off. How do I turn this on and off?Can I make a push button? What about a switch?
Yeah none of those ideas worked. Either they weren't functional or I'd break a piece and have to start over and to make matters worse after a few days of playing with button ideas I snapped my negative wires just short of my battery. Then my battery holder fell off. My epoxy didn't stick to the material of this leg. (Hey Hanger, I won't tell if you tell me what's it made of. I just want to know because this thing is wicked cool.) Good ole' super glue to the rescue! When in trouble, when in doubt just pull the duct tape and super glue out. Once glued I attempted to salvage all my work by taping smaller pieces of copper to the pre-existing negative strips but the adhesive on the copper tape was blocking any chance of currant I was hoping to get. I attempted using the wire glue ant that was a mess.
I had to start over somehow.
*Note to self: Save yourself the headache. Map all this out next time like originally planned and follow through with it.*
Off came the LED's. Off came the silicone. (Forgot to mention to you that I rushed that also. I felt like I had everything working properly and it was safe to silicone the lights in place. Que cera cera. It was downright frustrating. Those LED's are smaller than grains of rice. If I breathed on them wrong I would lose them. And a few were lost in the end despite my best efforts.) Out came the sandpaper and off came the electrical glue.
Despite feeling like this was a huge set back in hindsight it turns out this is exactly what I needed. With new strips of copper put on and a better plan in place I worked a little more slowly. I made a mock up of my battery holder on a piece of scrap paper. This allowed me to test covers and test my connections without losing my hard work. I'm so glad I got 4 print offs of the battery holders!
Everything ran quicker this time though. By now I had figured out which side was positive and which was negative on the LEDs and how long it took for the wire glue to set and how to make tighter corners with my tape.
While I was knocking these issues out I had been staring at a roll of electrical tape I bought in hopes to save my copper disaster. ( I had this "great" plan to use wire to extend my negative wires. Turns out I probably needed a math equation to figure that one out. My wires just weren't conductive enough.) This is where I realized electrical tape was flexible enough to act as a battery cover! Viola! A few prototypes in and I had my answer!
Well, sort of. My lights worked properly again, but the problem was I still couldn't get the stupid thing off and ended up draining all the batteries I had. I told Danielle during a phone call that I was at the point where I was just going to give her a piece of paper to shove behind the battery. So that's exactly what I did. Hard to believe that was solved with a piece of unheated Shrinky Dinks and some elastic. It might not be the perfect switch, but it did solve my problem. I'm not complaining.
Well, I've spun my tale for long enough. I won't keep you waiting any longer. Here's Danielle's leg cover, lights and a little treasure, it glows under a blacklight.
Enjoy!
