It’s that time of the year, when the beauty of nature is juxtaposed with a wild uptick in public drunkenness in parks.

• I know this because:
• I see them in bloom.
• I made the mistake of meeting a friend in Ueno recently and he and I were UNPREPARED for the slow-moving packs of visiting foreigners and residential elderly packs pressing in on all sides.

CHERRY BLOSSOMS, y’all!

According to targeted adds on face book it’s also the season that CATS, and some dogs, start feeling about IKEA the way I used to when my medication was off and I NEEDED to organize EVERYTHING.

Monday evening, last week, I signed a contract for my new job. Because the train ride back to my apartment involved changing trains and Ikebukuro…I HAD to go to Dollyteria Ikebukuro to see who might come home with me.

Hello Abbey Bominable.

My quick googling tells me that Abbey’s backstory is that she’s a sexy Yeti.

From the Monster High fandom wiki.

Abbey is known as the tough ghoul at Monster High. However, she is a victim of the culture clash between the Scaremerican way of life she is experiencing with her native Himalayan culture, and, though she works hard to walk away from this, will assume her latter ways are the correct ones and the ones that inspire most common sense. Due to this, Abbey was raised with short and strong words and is fierce, confident, intimidating and often headstrong. She won’t stand for nonsense and will not tolerate any kind of rule-breaking, unless it is for a greater good.

It goes on to explain how her jewely keeps her nice and icy and such.

Sorry Abbey, it’s CHERRY BLOSSOM SEASON and you’re coming with us. Maybe we’ll stop at Ikea on the way.

The very next day, after training that literally explained things like HOW TO HOLD A FLASH CARD (and implied that Canadians use a lot of drugs) I started to work on Abbey Sakura.

Her hair was fairly stiff so I scraped some glue out of her head, used a DIY Goo-Gone, and removed her makeup. I’ll probably give it a few more cleanings and then root some pink strands into her existing hair.

My inspiration was the color of Abbey’s skin. It reminds me of the blue sky you see popping behind all the cherry blossoms in peak pretty.

I’ve been using Wave Epoxy Putty to create cherry blossoms and bark on her body.

I’m using Wave because in my googling (in my second language) it seemed a close match to Apoxie Sculpt. It’s a two part epoxy modeling agent (the chemical setting reaction starts when you mix the two parts) with a working time ( about 2 hours) similar to Apoxie…as far as I know. Most places here price Apoxie Sculpt so high that it’s about a 100% markup.

I figured that, since her clothing is sculpted right on, I’d do the same for her shoes. I drilled into her heels, shoved toothpicks into them, and started building the layers of epoxy.

The putty cures after 24 hours. I’m working it a little at a time because in order to work on, say, a leg, I have to hold many other parts of the body. I can’t do this if the other body parts are still drying.

Needless to say, my curiosity got the best of me and I found the cheapest price I could and ordered….

Tonight I’ll be playing with it and seeing how it compares to Wave…and some maths to figure out the price difference per gram.

You and me both, cat.