The Making of a Creative Groom

Even though I did not win any prizes at Groom Expo for my Creative groom, I promised to show the progression of the groom.

There are so many pictures that I had to make collages of them so that I would not have to upload a ton of pictures.

I started growing my Poodles hair out in December of 2010.

For a month
I had been drawing designs and deciding what I was going to do.

By February, I was ready to start cutting the design into Hanna's coat.

I used the end of my comb to make the lines in her coat that I wanted to follow.

 

In March, I set the pattern deeper into her coat by cutting the coat that I didn't want very short.

I was also trying to decide what the smaller designs were going to be on her.

I used childrens hair bands and barrettes to hold the hair that I wanted to keep.

In the bottom right picture you can see were I was thinking about cutting out hearts on her hip.

I did not like the hearts so I played around with putting flowers on her instead.

Unfortunately, I ran out of time during the competition, and had to cut all of the flowers off.

I really wanted to do those flowers.  :(

I think that it would have made a big difference in the finished product.

I was also constantly playing around with different color designs in Photoshop.

I could not decide what I liked best.

By July, her coat was very long, and everyone was telling me that she looked like she had mange.

At this time she also had a reaction to Frontline.

She had a large bald spot on the back of her neck.

In August, I tested the Blow pens out, and tried out the colors that I planed on using.

I was also trying different things out on the butterfly.

Right up till a week before the competition I was still playing around with different ideas.

I was thinking of cutting off the butterfly and cutting out stars instead.

A couple of weeks before the Expo, I worked on my presentation.

The bridge.

The background, I painted with spray paint.

The clouds.

Boy, was it a pain getting this stuff to the Expo without ruining it.

 The night before the competition, we took the dogs to the grooming area in the lower garage.

It is a nice grooming area that is set up for the groomers to bathe their dogs before their competitions.

The light is not the greatest, but at least it is a nice sized area to groom.

My daughters Bichon was supposed to be part of the presentation, but all of the activity freaked him out a little.

A rainbow angel in training.

I had my whole groom timed out.

The IPG rules said that we had 2 1/2 hours.

The Groom Expo schedule said that we had 3 1/2 hours to compete.

I asked one of the Barkleigh employees about the time, and was told 3 1/2 hours.

Not.  :(

  We started at 10:30.

By 11:05 I was just about finished scissoring her.

By 11:10 I started to hairspray her hair.

This is where I changed the first thing in my schedule.

I decided to do the rainbow first when I had planed on doing the flowers first.

Why?

I figured that if I ran out of time, it was more important to have the rainbow done.

By 11:17 I started putting on the color.

By the noon lunch break, I only had one leg and the butterfly colored.

I was already behind.

 After the lunch break, I thought that I still had 2 hours left to work.

I finished up the first side and Hanna's head.

At this time I was starting to get a headache from blowing the blow pens.

At 2:00 they called for a 15 minute Sally Break.

Where did that hour go!?

During the Sally Break we were informed that we had a half an hour left of scissor time and 10 minutes to set up our background.

WHAT!?

Half an hour!

I still had one whole side to color, my flowers to do, the butterfly to finish, and the tail to finish.

I thought that I still had an hour.  :p

 

I had to make a decision.

I cut off the flowers. :(

I cut off the tail. :(

I didn't finish the butterfly. :(

I did blow my brains out finishing the rainbow.

With the help of my wonderful daughter and son, we got the presentation set up in time.

I don't know why, but they put a curtain up in front of the stage that blocked people from seeing everything.

This is the only picture that I have of what to whole presentation looked like.

If you can't tell, it was supposed to be the rainbow garden in Heaven with the rainbow bridge.

The blue fabric was supposed to be a stream running through the garden and under the bridge.

I wish I had had time to do the flowers.

I wish that the blow pen colors were brighter.

I wish I could have put the detail on the butterfly.

There was also supposed to be a flower on this side too.

At least I finished the rainbow.  :)

The presentation went well.

My poem only lasted about a minute and a half, but Hanna was so tired, or my poem was so boring, that she fell asleep before I finished.

She was one sleepy Rainbow Angel.

 It was fun, and my girl was great.

She is now all white again, and her hair is growing back out.

She is my Angel.  :)

Happy Grooming, MFF