The week started with a trip into town. I needed more materials and a trip to my favorite hobby shop in LA. This time it wasn’t in the rain and it was pleasant and beautiful. Spring and the rains contributed to a landscape of green and mustard flowers that laden the hills with different shades of green and yellow.

Mary put up her blog early because the grandkids are here. She was pretty busy. Here’s her post for this week: https://marycacciapaglia.wpcomstaging.com/2022/04/09/fiber-oils/

Driving home I reflected on my visit to Smith Brothers Hobby Center and the 40 years I have been shopping there. I had a new airplane in the back of the car and it brought a smile to my face.

I wrote this piece about why hobbies are so important and overlooked in their importance by family members, and friends. Hobbies do extend lives and enrich them:

Yesterday began with another trip into town for materials and a stop at my favorite hobby shop in the world. Smith Brothers Hobby Center in Reseda. 

I have been friends with the owner and the people that work there for over 40 years. They have survived as one of the only few remaining old time hobby shops in LA because of their loyal friends and customers who shop there instead of the internet. 

It’s a beautiful, happy place full of the wonders that so captured our hearts as children. It has kept our inner child alive. It has contributed to much longer lives than would have been possible with the passion and love for our hobbies.

I could have ordered my plane online, paid the same price and had it delivered. But when you buy from a local hobby shop you get the social pleasure of visiting there, looking at what we’re about to buy, hold it in your hands, having your questions answered by experts, and visiting with old friends. Even though you pay the same price, you help the hobby shop. Since they are dealers they make a profit from your purchase that goes a long way to keeping them in business, not Amazon. If we are going to keep the hobby shops and the experience of them alive , we all need to support them and stop supporting online businesses that can never provide the same experience I had the joy of yesterday.

Now that I have a field close to home with a paved runway it has changed the hobby for me.

When I moved to Ventura over 9 years ago I lost my ability to fly locally off and paved runway close to home. I flew gliders on the dunes and cliffs when I could. Took off grass with small planes at a park in Carpinteria. Everywhere I could go with the exception of the local dunes was a long drive. So I didn’t fly much and I gave away many of my planes. Now that I have an excellent field 18 minutes from home I’ve started flying regularly once again. I had no idea how much I missed it. And it dramatically changed my disposition. Not that I was unhappy, but it just contributed more to my happiness and joy. 

Being that I’m a bit rusty, I picked up this Piper Cherokee yesterday. This is an excellent well mannered general aviation aircraft that has a wide flight envelope.

 This will allow me much needed practice navigating the new field and the flight pattern there. And with its scale lighting it helps improve visual flight orientation. I’ll be flying this weekend and I’m really looking forward to it.

I know so many people well into their 80s that are healthy, happy and playful because of their passion for model aviation, slot cars, trains, rc cars and more. Please support family members no matter their age in their interest in any of these hobbies.

As for the rest of the week I spent it trying to catch up on orders. I’m down to 7 masks. They are prepped and ready to paint. My hair came in yesterday and I also have the glue to lay the hair.

The one thing holding me up is the paint I should have that early this week.

Because of these orders I haven’t had the chance to start anything new. And with my grandchildren who arrived last night spending 5 days with us I probably won’t this week either. As they say, “Life happens”.

I have been sneaking in a half hour here and there on my Samba 2 meter glider and managed to get it covered and ready for hooking up the electronics.

This plane can be hand launched  and if the conditions are right you can find a thermal at low altitude and start turning into the thermal and climb it until you reach several hundred feet or more. Flight times can be as long as you have battery power. It doesn’t have a motor, makes no sound, and has no carbon footprint. [Well it does have a carbon fiber boom. Does that count? 😉 ] other than that, it’s all balsa hand-built. This is pure natural flying.

That wraps it up for this week. Lots of interesting things will be happening next and we’ll see you then. Thanks for all the orders and emails!

Lots of love to you all,

Steve and Mary

The Art of Steve Neill

SNG Studio on Patreon

Fine Art America – Steve Neill 

Collectors’ Mask Store

SNG Aero – Rockets by Steve Neill
…and Mary on the web
As always, feel free let us know if you want to be removed from our newsletter by emailing us.  Share with friends if you think they would be interested in what we do. Comments and suggestions are encouraged. We love hearing from you!

The last 3 days have been Grandchildren’s time mostly. We went to the Marina just down from our home and saw the seals and played in the park. The WW2 AT6 Texans of the Condors paid us a visit.

Sunday I went to our local field where I made a maiden flight of the Cherokee. It flew very well and I made three long flights with her. 

Mark was there flying his scratch-built Super Kaso. We had a good turn out of all kinds of airplanes and helicopters. It was a great day. Perfect conditions and plenty of sunshine. I swear that field is magic.

Later in the day we played slot cars and I let the kids call home on a TOS Star Trek communicator.

Back to work today for a bit. We have a special visitor to our studio and whatever time I have left I’ll be painting masks!

The kids go back home to Vista Friday morning and we’ll get back to our routine next week and finish and ship all the remaining orders.

It has come to my attention that many of you have not read the very prominent notice in red at the top of the Collectors Mask Page store. I highly recommend you do this before you purchase a mask from me. Depending on supplies availability, schedule, amount of orders, or all of the above it can take time to make your mask or kits. I ship in the order they were received.

I also recently posted a video about this very thing that explains in more detail. Meanwhile I’m waiting for more crepe hair. It will arrive tomorrow. I just got an order of cement I used to apply the hair yesterday. Tomorrow I’ll be back to laying more hair after I paint a whole bunch of masks today.

Yesterday began with another trip into town for materials and a stop at my favorite hobby shop in the world. Smith Brothers Hobby Center in Reseda. Click on the home button to visit there store site.

Home

 I have been friends with the owner and the people that work there for over 40 years. They have survived as one of the only few remaining old time hobby shops in LA because of their loyal friends and customers who shop there instead of the internet. 

It’s a beautiful, happy place full of the wonders that so captured our hearts as children. It has kept our inner child alive. It has contributed to much longer lives than would have been possible with the passion and love for our hobbies.

I could have ordered my plane online, paid the same price and had it delivered. But when you buy from a local hobby shop you get the social pleasure of visiting there, looking at what we’re about to buy, hold it in your hands, having your questions answered by experts, and visiting with old friends. Even though you pay the same price, you help the hobby shop. Since they are dealers they make a profit from your purchase that goes a long way to keeping them in business, not amazon. 

If we are going to keep the hobby shops and the experience of them alive , we all need to support them and stop supporting online businesses that can never provide the same experience I had the joy of yesterday.

Now that I have a field close to home with a paved runway it has changed the hobby for me.

When I moved to Ventura over 9 years ago I lost my ability to fly locally off and paved runway close to home. I flew gliders on the dunes and cliffs when I could. Took off grass with small planes at a park in Carpinteria. Everywhere I could go with the exception of the local dunes was a long drive. So I didn’t fly much and I gave away many of my planes. Now that I have an excellent field 18 minutes from home I’ve started flying regularly once again. I had no idea how much I missed it. And it dramatically changed my disposition. Not that I was unhappy, but it just contributed more to my happiness and joy. 

Being that I’m a bit rusty I picked up this Piper Cherokee yesterday. This is an excellent well mannered general aviation aircraft that has a wide flight envelope. This will allow me much needed practice navigating the new field and the flight pattern there. And with its scale lighting it helps improve visual flight orientation. I’ll be flying this weekend and I’m really looking forward to it.

Back at the studio I got 4 masks shipped out and then ran out of hair. I’ll have more tomorrow. I got two more orangutan masks with one left to cast today. 

This catches me up and I should finish the remaining pile of these masks this week.

What can I say that I haven’t said constantly for weeks now.? Yes I’m still making masks and filling orders. It has slowed down and I haven’t got many more orders lately which is a good thing because it allows me the time I need to catch up.

Yesterday I got some more paint and hair laid on the masks. Today I can ship 4 masks at long last and the rest this later week(if my materials arrive in time) before the Grandchild arrive for 5 days at our home. And you all know what that means.

I still have a rocket kit to make up too but I ran out of stuff and had to ordermore. I have stopped bulk buying materials for the most part. Everything is going up 1/3rd to 1/2 and it’s outrageous. Soon I’ll be forced to raise my prices. So I get what I need as I need it but then there’s the supply chain problem. Some things like crepe hair I have to wait for and I ran out of dark brown yesterday. Here I wait to hear back from the supplier…”when?” Or I’ll have to order from New York and wait 3-4 days.

Meanwhile I’m trimming and painting so when the hair gets here I can finish these orders. Thank you all so very much for your understanding and patience.

This has to be the most repetitive newsletter to date for most of you. Repetitive in the sense that I am repeating myself due to the influx of ape mask orders. Little did I know they would be so popular and it is taking all of my time lately to keep up with it all. But that’s not a bad thing. It’s a good thing for the studio.

Despite that, the profit from all my hard work is marginal (all masks are under $275). This fact does not allow me money to hire help. And everytime time I turn around to re-purchase materials the price of those materials go up. Inflation is very real here and cuts into studio profit. Companies are using inflation and the war as an excuse to jack up prices. They have increased the costs of some things as much as a third over that of what I paid last month. By all rights I should increase my prices. I’m not sure the market will bear it. The people that collect my work are hard working people and money is tight these days as the men in the suits steal from us more and more.

End of bitching and back to the work at the studio.Time has been spent with casting, trimming, painting, and laying hair but it all goes a long way to keeping our doors open. I never did get the Tologian started this week. I hope to do that and start apes prosthetics as well, next week.

I did manage to make the first Orangutan test mask and I think it turned out rather well.

We are now officially adult Girl Scouts and our Troop is Camp Arnaz. The Girl Scout troop we are involved with is actively seeking a launch site for their rocket class activities we will be teaching soon. Finally I can contribute to the interests of young minds seeking the stars. Who knows which one of those girls might be the one that discovers warp drive and starts the dream of exploring the Galaxy.

We had a good production meeting with Peter Fox and Dr. Chris Landon for the movie I’m directing soon named, “Good Vibrations”. This is not about the beach boys but a rather deep lesson in the human experience about life. There will be no aliens, flying saucers, or Sci Fi this time. Our lives are amazing and unexplained as it is without all that. We have our child actor who is an amazing little girl with tons of talent named Poem. I think her name is rather perfect considering the nature of Peter Fox’s script. This film should be a game changer for us.

Mary explained the following on Facebook:

“I’m going to put it out there (if anyone is seeing this)

Peter Fox wrote a great screenplay short called “Good Vibrations”.

He and a child actor are playing in it.

Steve Neill is directing it.

Dr. Chris Landon and I are helping with production.

We have a location at Girl Scout Camp Arnaz in Ventura County.

We need help though.

We have a camera but we need sound equipment (2 mics for the actors)

We have lights.

People wise, we need some help.

A sound person.

A light person (gaffer) and;

a make up artist.

Anyone who helps will, of course, get screen credit.

Our last film, The Dreamtime, won several awards.

It will be widely seen. (look up Peter Fox on Imdb)

If you can help, or know anyone who can please email me at mary.cacciapaglia@gmail.com“

Mary posts her work at her WordPress blog https://marycacciapaglia.wpcomstaging.com on Sundays. 

That’s it for this week. We deeply appreciate all the orders and the busy times at the studio. We thank you all for your continued support on Patreon. Every bit helps us to remain engaged in our many activities and projects.

In closing,my dear friend Carl Soto sent me this image from Laser Blast. I had never seen this artwork poster for the film before. This is a film that launched my career and Ve Neill’s many years ago and remains popular with the fans to this day. I played the alien in the opening sequence and made all the prosthetics and props. Ve applied the makeup and so did I. It was a lot of fun. The film was panned badly by many critics. It was never intended to be a serious film, but rather a fun, comical, spoof. It remains a cult classic.

Love you all,

Steve and Mary

The Art of Steve Neill

SNG Studio on Patreon

Fine Art America – Steve Neill 

Collectors’ Mask Store

SNG Aero – Rockets by Steve Neill
…and Mary on the web
As always, feel free let us know if you want to be removed from our newsletter by emailing us.  Share with friends if you think they would be interested in what we do. Comments and suggestions are encouraged. We love hearing from you!

I am slowly forging through these last batch of orders. In June I’ll have to increase the price as large companies are gouging us by increasing prices on products I use to make these masks by as much as one third more over that of last month.

Seems they are getting greedy and using the war and inflation as an excuse to steal from us all. Especially at the gas pump.

Here’s some pictures from yesterday. I start shipping now on Tuesday. I have become delayed once more as I ran out of Barge cement for the hair work.

Thanks again for your patience.

Thursday was a day for the latest mask of the Orangutan. Being the first one there was a lot to work out. The crepe hair I got from Burmans was the closest to the original color without mixing two colors which of course sends the price up if I were to do that. My aim is to keep the cost of these masks as reasonable as possible for all of you to afford and enjoy. My profit on these masks after all the labor and materials is low at best.

I had to get the paint job and hair as correct as possible and it took two days to do that. Now that I have the test mask done I can take what I learned from it and apply it to the many pre-orders next week and get them done.

This caused the gorilla orders to be somewhat delayed and I apologize for this but it’s just me, myself, and I doing all this work and I very much appreciate your patience. Now that the orangutan is done things will start moving again. That and numerous meetings and business visitors to the studio has made this a complicated week of time investment.

Here’s the finished test mask.

It’s a bit like a broken record but once again I’m working on the apes nearly full time. Although we did have a production meeting with Peter Fox and Dr. Chris Landon in the morning the rest of the day was spent catching upon orders.

I got the first batch of last week’s orders painted. And I painted the first test Orangutan. It took awhile to dial in the color. In pictures and clips they looked different every time. I mostly pulled on my memory of the actual appliances I worked with back in the day. And they were always painted and colored a little differently from makeup to makeup.

I tried it on to see how much movement I might get out of this new batch of latex I got from the Burman’s recently. It moved very well. I can only imagine how well it would move if one was to glue it to one’s face.

Today I put the teeth and hair on this mask. Another test to see if the hair looks right. 

I poured the chimp mask order in the new mold and that should come out today.

All the masks will get their hair today if possible and the first one shipped in the order they were received tomorrow.