craftgrrl | Chi-Wa-Wa

Last week, my mom and I were driving down the alley behind our house when I saw a chihuahua sitting in the road, staring at us. I momentarily freaked out, because there was a lonely chihuahua sitting in the road. When I realized he was missing an ear and not moving so much, I realized he was actually a big, ceramic chihuahua statue.

We continued going where we were going, but I kept thinking about how cute the little statue was and what a shame is was that he was going to become garbage. The ear seemed to be all that was wrong with it. It was behind the house of an old lady who lives down the street from us, and we figured she must have just put it out for the garbage truck when the ear broke.

I felt sorry for the little chihuahua. ...So we kind of stole him. When the other person doesn't want what you're taking, I guess it's less like stealing and more like seeing an abandoned couch on the side of the road and deciding to take it home. Either way, I have referred to this as "grand theft chihuahua."

After bringing it in the house, I cleaned it off. (I practically boiled the thing, because you never know how clean your neighbors are.) There was quite a bit more chipped paint than I had noticed. Over the course of two days, the little statue was glued and mended, painted throughly with more pink paint than I care to ever use again, varnished, and just generally prettied up. I drew some inspiration from Frankenweenie and Elvira's Algonquin, as well as my time spent giving Barbie a mohawk back when I was 15-years-old.

I had initially wanted to fix it up and put it in my garden, but my mom felt weird about us using it when the previous owner could potentially see it. I thought it would have been clever to return it to her house in its new state, but I ended up giving it to my friend who has a chihuahua and loves all things Mexican/"goth". I was a little sad to see the little statue go, but I know it has a good home now.

Before and after.

Chi-Chi is a little sexually ambiguous. When I found the statue, I kept calling it a "he", but the more I painted and worked on it, I started calling it a "her". You can decide for yourselves.

The leopard collar is fuzzy, and the tag is black shrinkydink with metallic silver sharpie. The tag is sealed with a gloss varnish and sewn onto the collar with a jump ring.

I had to put bolts on her neck, what with my piecing her back together and giving her a new life and all. The bolts are baked sculpey, painted with silver paint and a matte varnish.