I’ve just recently completed the project I was working on for my day job, so this past week I’ve had time to try some things out. I also wanted to start them before leaving for my upcoming Christmas holidays in Malaysia (lots of pictures to come!)
For a while now I’ve been wanting to work on some collages using my enormous stock of vintage, strange, funny and sexy images, and seeing a recent Kultart piece reminded me of how much material I had in my hard drive.
I basically wanted to do something similar to what I had done with the titty table, but more colorful and on different formats. I went out and bought different materials (canvas, brushes, Mod Podge, ink cartridges for the printer), and got to work with WeFunk Radio blasting in my living room.
I started by gluing the base of the collage (a gift wrapping paper I had bought a couple of months ago) on the canvas. In retrospect I should have bought a special Mod Podge brush since a normal paint brush didn’t allow me to evenly distribute the glue, which created little air bubbles where the glue wasn’t enough and small wrinkles where there was too much.
Once that was dry I printed some of my latest image downloads (cartoon characters, naked chicks, TV shows, superheroes, stock photos, etc.), cut them, and looked for the best way to place them on the canvas without overloading the overall picture.
Of course once I started gluing the images it was impossible to recreate the original balance I’d initially obtained, but I’m still happy with the end result. Hopefully this first attempt will lead to other objects (boxes, containers, books, cameras, etc.).
I also finally got around to customizing one of the turntables I had bought at a garage sale back in September (15 bucks!). The turntable worked in the sense that the current went through it and that the lights would turn on, but it couldn’t really play records.
I took it to one of my friends who repairs turntables, but he told me that it was so old that spare parts would be either too difficult to find or too expensive to obtain.
I wanted to paint the turntable in a bright blue shade (the French call it “bleu électrique“, I call it “Frida Kahlo blue” because of her house in Mexico City), but once I was in the paint shop I thought it would be too dark a color and I wouldn’t be able to display the object in my living room.
Thus, at the last minute I opted for a light blue/gray which, as I started painting, I realized was way too light, almost white.
I painted the whole thing anyway, but I think I’m going to do it over in the right blue shade I originally wanted. Or maybe I could use the white background to customize it further, maybe even use it as an experimental collage format?
A friend of a friend was moving a couple of monhs ago, and along with a sofa-bed we got two black IKEA tables, one long, one small. At the same time I became infatuated with the photos gathered on Retro Zone, so I thought I’d mix them up.
We started by selecting some of our favorite photos on that blog, and believe me, there are a lot of naked girls to select from. I decided to go with only black and white (vintage) images, so that it went well with the black background of the table. I also selected some color photos which I later printed in black & white. In total I ended up selecting some 150 images, which I printed in high quality A4 paper (two images per page, some 80 pages in total).
Then came the long and arduous task of cutting the images. We chose to cut around the naked girls, getting rid of all backgrounds. We used a corner to cut through difficult corners. After two or three days of cutting we ended up with lots of naked girls in silouhette form, and lots we left as big rectangles so that they could be used as the very first layer of the collage:
Then we chose how to best arrange the background photos, and glued them using varnish glue (that glues and varnishes at the same time, duh!):
After the first two images we found out it was better to go really easy on the glue that goes on the bottom of the image, because if there’s too much as it dries it makes bubbles and ripples that cannot be removed once completely dry…
Once that first layer dried overnight we chose and pasted the smaller images that would come fill the gaps between the background images and complete the whole collage:
Once that also dried overnight we did three or four more layers of varnish, and proceeded the same way for the legs (though I have to admit we did those pretty quickly, with less attention to detail…):
The do a couple more varnish layers, let dry, and Voilà!, you got a sexy coffee table which won’t let anyone indifferent! And don’t forget to fondle the crap out of that table!
I wanted to make wearable masks for a themed birthday party, and thought i’d try to make them myself using some of the portraits I have on flickr. Of course any photo can be used, but i found high resolution frontal picture work best when working on the eyes. I cropped the images below to keep only the face and printed them in A4 size in laser color printer.
Then I cut around the faces and glued them onto sheets of cardboard paper (I used the extra thin one so it would be easier to cut holes in it):
Once dry I cut around the faces again, cut the eyes out with a cutter, and punched some small holes on both sides of the head. I then used some basic string to make the mask wearable.
The end result is kind of creepy, but also funny. We tested them out on the banks of the Seine. Some people had a laugh, others were scared by the big smiling faces.
And don’t forget to wear the crap out of those masks!
A couple of years ago we found some very cool wooden chairs by the curb. they were clean, in a good state, and they looked pretty comfy. But they were brown and ugly. So we took all of the stickers we had accumulated from exchanges with street artists on flickr (stickertraders and stickerbombing), and customized them. Here’s how:
First off, scrape off the original coat and finish of the chair with some sandpaper:
Then decide carefully how you’re going to cover the chair using varnished glue. We chose to do a first layer of those big “Hello My Name Is” stickers so that once we put the ones we liked on top there wouldn’t be any blank spot on the bottom:
Let the chair dry overnight, and you’re done! Now sit the crap out of that chair!
Last year I wanted to do something special for my brother’s birthday. So I thought what better than a traditional Mexican piñata? But all the ones I found in Paris were either ugly or expensive (esquipulas and lapinata)…So with my girlfriend we made our own, based on the Japanese character Domo Kun. here’s a little recap in photos:
You’ll need balloons, old newspapers, plaster, cissors, color paper, normal A4 white paper, two buttons (black), and some liquid glue.
Start off by choosing the right shape of balloons, which will give the piñata its ultimate shape once covered in paper maché and plaster. I needed one squarish balloon, but since i couldn’t find any I took two long balloons and taped them together. One was slightly longer than the other, which was pure accident, but in the end it was perfect to get Domo’s final pose. Once the balloons are properly covered in paper maché (not too many layers, don’t want to make it unbreakable!), let them dry, and apply plaster. One cover should be enough.
Then let it dry off for a couple of hours:
Once dry you can cover the plaster base with the colored paper of your choice, which in this case was brown:
Then let it dry again.
Then we get to the details. We cut a red mouth using a square piece of red paper. The teeth were regular white paper cut in triangles. For the hands we used two toilet paper rolls with one end stuffed with newspaper and the other one shut and glued to the plaster base.
The we glue two black buttons for the eyes, and voilà!
Now that the piñata itself is done, you’ll need to cut a hole into it (could be on the side or on the top, depending on how you’re going to hang it in the air. We used regular pointy cissors and a wire hanger to make the pulley-thingy which will allow to hang it up:
Now just stuff it full of fun stuff like chocolates, candy bars, gum, cigarettes, whistles, and that’s it, you’re done!
Take lots of pictures of your finished work, and then beat the crap out of it!
