Zombie Factory

For the past several years, my friend, Colleen, has held a holiday artist market at her restaurant, Tsunami. Last year her son made a bunch of super cute cork figures to sell. This year she invited other kids to come and sell crafts. Of course I signed up Satchel and Jiro. Of course they didn't want to do it...until they realized they could potentially make some money. "We get to keep the money?" Satchel clarified. "Yes," I assured him. Then it was on.

I had seen something on Pinterest about zombifying Barbies and suggested that as their craft. We went to the thrift store and scored four real Barbies and a couple of other plastic dolls. When it came time to start the zombie process on Saturday afternoon, Jiro lost interest. Satchel, motivated by the eventual pay off, soldiered on. Jiro went to a sleepover.

Warren had the brilliant idea of stringing the dolls to a broomstick for painting. Had I been in charge, we would have accidentally spray mounted them on newspaper.



Warren also said we should use grey spray paint, but he was too late! Due to the rubberyness of the Barbies and Satchel's extremely thorough spraypainting job, it took forever for them to dry. Warren hooked up a fan "bath" for them and they were eventually ready to be clothed in gauze.




I did their hair, then went to a friend's 40th birthday party. While there, I started getting picture texts like this.





Needless to say, Satchel and Warren had fun playing Barbies while I was out.



The show was on Sunday, and I worried Satchel would be too shy to sell the dolls. Jiro was re-enlisted to lend moral support and chat up the would be customers.



They were seated next to Colleen's son, Ian, and ended up having a great time.



Jiro lost interest after a couple of hours, but by then Satchel was feeling comfortable and had sold all but two dolls! I suggested lowering his prices, but he refused. Jiro and I had to leave for a bit to do a thing at Overton Park (more on that later) and when we returned, Satchel was sold out and had $90 in his pocket! He was one excited boy.

Then, in a totally unexpected move, he gave Jiro $40. There had been some discussion earlier about giving him a 25% cut, so either he can't do math or he's just super awesome.

Satchel is already planning what he will make next year! It was such a great experience for him, and Jiro. Super shout out to Colleen for being so awesome and generous.