I wanted to start experimenting with the piece surrounding this story:

So when I was little, my great grandmother on my mother's side was still alive, and we'd visit her little apartment in Kutztown...she lived close to my grandmother just in case something happened but was too ballsy to live anything but on her own. I wasn't too keen on the visits because she didn't have much to play with except for some picture viewer things (like those red binoculars with picture wheels inside of them). But one time we found a bunch of little animal figurines. There was an octopus i think, a cat maybe, and definitely a zebra. I remember the zebra the most because it had those crazy huge painted Precious Moments eyes. Anyway, all of the figurines were broken, but I didn't care. In fact, it made me like them more...they were these shiny glazed ceramic things with little broken off hooves and feet. So I asked if I could have them and everyone looked at me funny. I took them home, a 3 hour car ride in a tiny stuffed box, and made a bed for them in a box i had made out of popsicle sticks. What's better is I took cotton balls and taped them to the rough broken parts of the creatures. kinda like bandages. To this day, they are in that box on my shelf because every time I look at them, I can't manage to throw them away. They've survived more room cleaning purges than I can count, yet they remain. I guess it's just how frail they look. I dunno. There's something innately beautiful about keeping something no one wants and taking care of it until you feel like somehow, it might just get better. -Emily 

I couldn't find broken figurines as easily so i bought a cheap one for $1, another yard sale find. I decided i wanted to work with the head but cutting it off was a lot harder than i thought. i thought i could saw it off but ceramic is much harder to cut into! I ended up using an assortment of flex shaft tools especially the cutting wheels for sprue cutting. I felt so evil chopping the cute head off this little lamb but it had to be done if i wanted to keep moving.