Taxidermy & Mildred 🦇

We made her feel BONITA

I used to work as a taxidermist on a ranch in west Texas. 

Blood, guts, fur, teeth, bones, you name it, I’ve had it on my clothes, in my hair, and on my Timbs (my work boot of choice).

The gore never bothered me. 

Skinning a deer, a duck, or basically anything with feathers or fur was as easy and normal as checking my email, but my favorite part of the process was always the detail work. Making the birds and mammals come alive on their mounts always depended heavily on the details. It was also where I shined the brightest, giving me a sense of pride and accomplishment. I sculpted the clay for the orbital area with hyper precision, hand-shaped ears and noses with delicate care, and arranged each feather to mimic flight so that you’d do a double take as you walked past. Did you need a bass mount? I got you. My airbrushing skills were top-notch. 

The detail work was an ongoing process. You have to keep a keen eye on things as the mount dries. Taping feathers in place is common; daily checking how the skin is drying against the prosthetic eye is essential. (It likes to pull away, creating an unsightly ridge.) 

Ah! Makes me giddy just thinking about it. 

Fun fact: Dita Von Teese has some of my work sitting on her mantle in her living room. A beautiful pheasant, complete with a custom jeweled necklace, made by my very talented best friend and jewelry designer, Sayran. 

You can see the pheasant here in the AD video tour of her home.

Meeting Dita, the ultimate taxidermy lover, and presenting her with my work and displaying it in her beautiful home was a bucket list item in my taxidermy career. 

A screenshot of the pheasant I mounted for Dita from the Architectural Digest video tour of her home. (Dita added an extra pearl necklace.)

Some find it morbid, but we find it deeply moving and beautiful.

Second fun fact: 99.9% of taxidermists refuse to do pets. Because people become so bonded to their animals and have spent years with them, it’s almost impossible to capture their entire essence (because we don’t know them the way you do), and it is a fool’s errand even to try. I always know when someone isn’t familiar with taxidermy when they ask about pets. It’s an innocent question, and I am always happy to explain why we don’t do that.

Although my taxidermy days are over (not enough freezer space, NYC, focusing on writing), my love of building beautiful things with my hands is very much alive and thriving. I forgot how rewarding it is to watch a project grow and suddenly burst with life the moment the last piece is in place. 

That old familiar feeling I had with taxidermy returned when we made Mildred.

Introducing Mildred 🦇

Mildred will be greeting Trick or Treaters with candy at the front door if they are brave enough to make it through the eerie purple glow, fog, and tombstones, up the stairs, and past the five-foot tall demon bat skeletons that are guarding our entryway. 

We don’t like blah or boring in this house, especially when it comes to Halloween. Having a basic factory skeleton was never an option. We needed to give her a quick makeover, and I think she looks ravishing! 

The only time-consuming part was allowing things to dry before proceeding to the next step. 

First things first, aging those bones with wood stain. I aged her whole body in less than 30 minutes. The best technique is wiping a section down with the stain, allowing it to dry for 3-4 minutes, then taking a dry cloth to wipe off the excess. After she dried, we melted 3 mm 9x12 plastic drop cloth with a heat gun that helped create an accurate musculoskeletal system look. The drop cloth is vast, so we cut sections and draped them over Mildred. Depending on the level of guts and goo you’re going for, you can do 1 or 2 layers. We did 2 layers in areas of her lower body and 1 layer for the face.

After we covered her entire body and part of her head with the melted plastic (I needed the back of her head to be smooth for her wig and to allow access to her battery pack), Joe gave her a splash of black in the eye area to create dark hollow caves where her eyes used to be. (She has red lights instead of eyes, so we covered them with tape before we painted.) 

Her factory teeth were drab, so we decided to give her a new set of chompers, but that meant getting surgical on them. 
We heated her original teeth with the heat gun—making it easier to cut them out. 

Even halfway finished with no teeth, she looks adorable!
Joe spray painted the rest of her body red and here is the set of composite teeth we used.

We used plumbers epoxy to craft gums and hold the teeth in place.
She’s no DNB (do nothing bish). Breaking skulls and eating brains is a full time job! She needed the teeth upgrade.
We left out a couple and placed a few of them in a wonky way for some extra razzle-dazzle.
Who doesn't love a snaggle-toothed zombie grandma?!

The epoxy bottle was used to keep her jaws separated while we performed her cosmetic dentistry. She looks so satisfyingly spooky in the right lighting.
I can relate. 💁🏻‍♀️

The taxidermist in me started to grow really obsessive, and I had to tell myself this was just for fun. It wasn’t anatomically perfect, and that was the whole point. Mildred is supposed to be wonky, beat up, and not right. 

Next, we had to add more guts and gore, and that came courtesy of Great Stuff Gaps & Cracks spray foam. You can see that she started out smooth. (Usually, you would do the melted plastic and spray foam before the painting so you don’t have to paint twice, but we wanted to see how she looked smooth—we didn’t like it as much.) Adding the spray foam gives her a nice gooey look. Spray it on then rub out the pronounced roundness with gloved hands (do not get it on your clothes, it will never come out!) to mimic body goo.

 Joe gave her a quick once-over with red paint again. 

Then, the really fun part, we painted black accents all over her body to give her a charred look. (We did her head separately because we had to cover her gums, teeth, eyes, and mind the battery pack. ) 

Next up was painting her gums and aging her teeth.
We used wood stain to mimic age, decay, and dirt. In the video you can see Joe brushing it on then wiping it off with a napkin.

What a stunner!
Finally, Mildred has come to life.
All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.

Mildred is an exhibitionist, so she wanted to sit on the front porch in all her glory for a couple of days. (Buuuuut really, we had to borrow a nightgown from Joe’s Nonna, and we hadn’t gone to pick it up yet.) 

We ordered a grandma costume set that came with a wig, glasses, and pearls!! We couldn’t stop laughing. It was perfect.

We made Mildred on a whim, and she turned out spectacular! 

Since Joe’s a surfboard shaper, we already had most of the supplies, so all of it was quick and easy.

Just looking at her brings me so much joy. I’m sure going to miss her when it’s time to put her away until next year. I had theeee best time making this with Joe, and we’re already talking about making more fun things for next year’s Halloween.

Working on a creative project with my partner that can hold their own, add incredible ideas, and execute them awakened something in me that had been dormant for years. 

Writing is creating worlds with words and imagination; it’s my first love.
But there is something infectious about building physical objects with your hands and watching them finally come to life, which feeds my creativity in a new way. I even got a fantastic idea for a story while we were making Mildred—if I can pull it off the way I envision, it could be incredible. 

It’s fun and necessary to broaden our creative horizons especially if we want to keep our primary source of creativity from going stagnant. One feeds the other, becoming a feast of ideas and inspiration.

This is me nudging you to try something new or return to your old haunts; creative lightning could strike!

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Love always,

Jenovia

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