Guest Bedroom

We're almost finished wtih the guest bedroom. It wasn't in as bad of shape as the other bedroom and we've only spent about $100.00 so far but we still need carpet, new beds, and some trim work. I've got the bedding and will finsih the curtains soon and have painted some thrift store furniture to go in the room. I designed it to be a fun bedroom for kids with twin beds, table and bookshelves and some books and toys to make it a fun place to be for my grandkids. It'll have to also serve as my office until we can build an addition. Here's a slideshow of the remodeling process.

http://www.slide.com/r/5JFUOVUC3T_zlsgo_FEeU0IIEBeJTvs1?previous_view=mscd_embedded_url&view=original

Unitarian Universalist Oscars GAY-la Celebration

About six weeks or so ago some friends at my UU church here in Vegas asked me to help with the decorations for their Oscars party. I love this sort of stuff so agreed. They had a catalouge of various decoration kits and the prices were shocking, well over $1000.00 for some cardboard and tinsel so I figured we could sparkle the place up for less than a third of that. Little did I know how much time I'd put into the project. Good thing I'm unemployed because this thing was a mother of all mothers to do up. The decorations turned out fabulous. The food was great and I enjoyed the people that were involved. Unfortunately the turnout was pretty low. Apparently the Gay community had a lot of competition in this realm and so the fund raising for the event went in the red considerably. Luckily I think I can re-use the decorations for another party that the Southern Utah PFLAG and Equality Utah group are hosting where they'll be having an awards show for GLBT film makers.

Anyway, here's some of the decorations. I'll describe how some were made as well. This blog program is really frustrating so it's hard to line up the images and text the way I want. Just scroll through till you hit the end. Tellwidit!

 The film was made by glueing aluminum foil to a roll of foam

insulation and then spray painted with black over a cardboard stencil. The light bounced off the shiny surface so doesn't quite do these photos justice. It looked great at the party and got lots of attention. Makes a great big visual statement and some movement to the blank carpeted walls.

I went online and copied a bunch of actor portraits and had them printed in black and white on just economy paper, then glued to black postor board to help frame them a little. The stars are fabulous and wonderfully photogenic so helped add a lot of glamour to the decorations. 



Purchased cutout decorations were
used on doorways and walls where
3-D items would be too intrusive





We blew up balloons with my Rainbow
vacuume and let them float on the floor

around the party center.



A bolt of red felt cut down the middle and taped with red duct tape made a
welcoming red carpet for the party guests and added a bright splash of
color to the scene.

What kind of GAY-la celebration would it be without a
FAhhhhbbbuullous Drag Queen. This is as close to a
Marilyn Monroe as BABB is likely to get.

Cheezy and plastic, yes, it's Hollywood BABY!

The ceiling and floors were pretty unattractive so we made some stringers with curling ribbon and attached them to the
grids on the dropped ceiling to give the effect of champaign bubbles and a flowing airiness to the decorations.

A Balloon artist came and made swans to go with the sparkle centerpieces.



I made this star from 1x2 pine strips screwed to a cardboard gusset for the
feet and tips of the triangles, then screwed the whole thing together on site.
Note to self, don't make 8' tall x 7'wide contraption in living room where it cannot
be removed without being taken apart.
I spray painted large bubble wrap and attached it to the frame and then
decorated it with a purchased tinsel curtain and sign. We forgot to cover
the tables with black tablecloths. Next time I guess.

I sketched silhouettes of
starletts and paparazzi
and then cut them out of
large sheets of cardboard
and then spray painted
them black. I made wedge
shaped stands to hold them
up but we put them against a
wall anyway.

Butterfly Chairs

I finished the six chairs that I'm going to give to my youngest daughter some day when she gets married. I already finished her hutch to match but don't yet have the photos. I found these chair seats at a thrift store for $4.00 each and they were extremely well made and had nice lines. They are oak and were sort of boring by themselves. Normally I wouldn't paint good wood but oak is so plain and these were screaming to be gussied up a bit.

The yellow is a mis-tint that I had the guy at Sherwinn Williams just re-tint to a sort of buttery mustard yellow color. It's fairly neutral and has been a really sunny fun color to use. My daughter loves yellow so these will fit her sunny world just great.
She's also my beautiful little butterfly just flitting from one thing to another and blessing it with her happiness. I miss her so much.

The butterflies are from a Dover book I ordered online and then just photocopied the pages to cut and re-use over and over. I love the butterfly theme because there's so many colorful ones to choose from. I separated the cut outs into color schemes and then started just playing with the layouts. I wanted something different for each chair so that they each have their own personality. After cutting them out and deciding their placement I decoupaged them in place and then traced around them with a metalic pen, adding a few embellishments here and there. They're almost too pretty to sit on!!

Now the expensive part and real chore is to find quality sturdy legs or bases to install. I think these were bar tool tops because each of them has a plywood base underneath. I'm hoping to keep them the right height for a dining room table because we are giving Holly a nice walnut drop leaf table for her first home when she gets married. These will help set off the gorgeous walnut and be a fun showpiece in her home.

Abstract collage

Normally I am not as skilled at abstract art but it seems to appeal to a wide audience and is actually much easier to make than the finely detailed pieces I usually do. A friend had the frames and some very primative looking stock art that came with the frames. She was tired of the images even though they emulated her color scheme. I went a slightly new direction with these using some of her bold color scheme but picking up as much torquois as I could because her dining table is made form a piece of thick shattered tempered glass and has a lot of refracted aqua colored light penetrating through. It softens the room a bit with the bright pastels but keeps to the bold theme of her home.

She uses a lot of wrought iron pieces so the shaddow stencil in a flat black helped to marry that theme. I re-used her frames, matting and backboard and just used some beautiful scrapbooking papers to complete the look and stay on a tight budget. The papers are so beautiful and layered with coordinating colors on the reverse side so I curled the ends to add a little whisper of what was behind as well as add a somewhat three dimensional quality to the work. It's sweet and flirty without being too pretentious, unless saying it isn't pretentious is pretentious.

Caille's Robot Costume

My amazing brilliant perfect and adorable grandson Caille turns four this week (I think it's this week, or maybe next, but sometime this month because I remember it was cold outside when he was born). Anyway, he and I are best buddies and he loves science stuff and pretending so I made him an everyday costume that he can wear whenever he wants. This is a Transformer/Robot play set.

I started with a bunch of thrift store junk and some doohickies from the garage. The body is made from an aluminum windshield reflector cut and hot glued over a pellon form. The pellon is actually the stuff wallpaper hangers use to smooth out a wall for professional wallpaper jobs. It's sold by the roll and is a really great stiff fabric base for anything painted, glued, or sewn and holds up well for costumes.

The yellow part is the plastic molded packaging that came around the Bose speakers my husband got me for Christmas. I just cut them apart and spray painted them yellow. Then I glued them to the pellon and wrapped the fabric around the edges to keep them from tearing and give a firm base to glue it to the body.

The blue and red coils are from the office supply place and are just the plastic/wire spirals for bound documents. The plastic tubing was some oxygen tubing I got at the thrift store and the gold buttons were just plastic buttons that I clipped the back loop from and hot glued to the yellow parts. the little knobs are electrical connectors from the garage and I just cut a tiny hole in a piece of the silver foil and poked the connectors through and glued them from the back. They look like toggle switches and dials for his robotic movements.

The holsters are just that sparkly glitter foam glued to some more pellon and looped around the side and front of the costume and hot glued in place. The gun and game control were from the thrift store and made cool weapons to fit in the holsters.

When I designed the body I made the side wings wide enough to wrap around each other and then glued four strips of velcro to them so the costume can be taken off easily. I made the neck hole fairly large because my brilliant perfect intelligent wonderful grandson has a freaking huge brainiac head.

I flared the shoulders to give him the impression of armour. It looks pretty manly.

The back is just some more of the molded plastic with some of the binder coils tucked into holes and glued in place and then I cut off the electrical connections from the game control and tucked the wires into holes in the yellow base and hot glued them from behind before glueing the whole thing onto the body.

It should be pretty easy for him to get in and out of and if it holds up well will fit him till he's a teenager. If he wants a new one I know someone who knows how to make them. I hope he wears it out and has lots of fun being a super smart robot/transformer guy.

The helmet was a super dooper amazing find at Deseret Industries thrift store. The back plastic cover is missing as is the battery shield but the front is so cool!! It's a bit heavy so I suspect he won't wear it much but just having such a cool thing is probably enviable. The Power Rangers gun actually works and makes very annoying noises. That's my payback! I think he'll love the gun best of all.

I spent almost $20.00 on the whole kit and kaboodle and it took me about three or four hrs. to complete. I'm busting proud of it. I hope he loves it.