The Upcycled overboard duck

I had high hopes of documenting this whole process on video, and I have a bit but....

it's really hard to video ones self while working! The white bits are foam strips I'm cutting from one big piece I found.

This is my beach plastic duck progressing. Thats a cut up basket ball above in black.

I'm coating the whole thing with layers of a sealant as I go to create a skin over all the little parts that aren't wired on.

Right now that is Duck butt cake a la Holly. Wouldn't that be a fun cake though...really!

And here's our heros face so far, a ways to go but looking more like a duck now. Thats a plastic milk carton beak spray painted orange

Invaluable extension (abundance) of a flotsom rope (excess) and a fantastic color to boot.

Hellen Chadwick introduced me to the term Bad Bloom. These black flowers on the ducks head represent that - and tar globs.

Coating the bill.

And heres a photo of the whole thing just after sealant application. I have all tomorrow to finish it. I've got a long way to go - but got thee "cute" thumbs up from a small friend so I'm happy.

It grows

It grows

The Upcycled beach plastic Duck 1

This is the beginning...or is it the end? Heck - I don't know.

I do know that it's supposed to be yellow.

In December I was hired by the Costal  Fund.  They are partnering with UCSB reads to promote a book called Moby Duck, and they have hired me to make a......drumroll please...

4 foot tall duck that looks like a rubber ducky bath toy that is made from ALL beach plastic. They want it to weigh less than 50 lbs. Well - I'm not so sure about that poundage - sounds a bit  hopeful, but the rest is all good.

I got the gig through the good people at the awesome Art From Scrap. Thanks guys!!

soooooo...

This is my store. This is where I pluck my materials from. How can you beet that?

(Answer...you can't but you can Corot it! AAAAAAAAAAHHH! I am so pleased with this one, not only that I caught my spelling faux pas but that I made a joke! I can be so un funny. Oh I am pleased).

I gave myself an extra challenge. To do the project in 10 days beginning New years eve. 

I've done 3 walks now to collect the plastic, the particulars of which I will go into later, but I've visited:

Jalama

A secrete private beach above above Bacaara

Ledbetter 

and I also have a bag of trash from my child and her dad who stopped to scavenge for me on their trip to SF. Thanks you guys!

I don't really know what to say at this point. I'm not panicking yet...I'm excited, and thats probably bad. 

I did some major cutting of large objects yesterday and am on my way to the studio now, but wanted to post this first. 

Today wasn't as straight forward as I had hoped - having been gifted with a vomiting child at 6 am, so I'm off to a slow start, but hey - it's life. There are obstacles. 

I'm going to quote a relative of mine now because I've been reading one of his books...I was anyhow...but i've misplaced it so it will have to  wait....

Upcycled Christmas tree - an ode

Oh sweet cardboard – ubiquitous friend

With your thirsty soft skin

And a core you can bend

Oh handsome cardboard – you don't make a fuss

When I puncture your ruffles

Or poke through your truss

But when it rains you collapse

And in the claws of a cat

Your integrity is compromised

Compromised

Your integrity is compromised

Though...

No mater cat or rain,

Stomping foot,  or oil stain

I cant get enough of your stuff,

(you're so buff)

and I'll use you again and again

Upcycled Christmas Ornaments

 "Snip snip snip" went the scissors above the glitter strewn floor of one house, fireplace going, cats and coziness radiating around the pointy silver slivers - shards from the aluminum baking tray I was slowly turning into...spring flowers for my Christmas tree...

Then at another house, I made more, on someones soft yoga mat which saved my knees, but did nothing for my back and the street light position I repetitively find myself in. "Straight back, straighter straighter" I say constantly with a resounding minute at best of physical memory connected to that command.

 With an aluminum baking tray, colored sharpies and some scissors (toe nail scissors are great to use for detail if you have them) I venture out into the night later. 3 men ahead of me filled with burbon, find their way no problem to the disheveled peace of the man cave.  Snip snip...shiver shiver......snip...go my little scissors clenched in my frozen hands as a set of spring bugs are birthed from the humble tray to go with my spring flowers on my tree. We go from adam and the ants Pandora to a discussion about the potential satisfaction to be had if there were to be a "I'm just sayin" button between the up and downward pointing "like" thumbs.  

I also used felt, glitter, enamel pens and tiny brads which I got at Michaels. All you really need though are scissors and aluminum and a sharpie or two. That's it. And when the boys went home, and 2am found me, i was there in bed making a ladybug to go on the tree...and now I realize that Im tired...but as soon as i stop rambling on here - I'm going to make some more.

Oh yeah - and you can emboss them with a fork, or pointy thing of some sort. 

Easy for kids to make too! 

Upcycled Advent Calendar

Yesterday my boyfriend told me that he had looked - but that all the stores were out of advent calendars.

 He hadn't ever really used them growing up but he wanted one for his daughter.

 So I went down in his basement and made one out of the first box I found.

 These are it.  

Super simple. get two pieces of cardboard and cut however many holes you want out (this calendar has 31...) and then put the other cardboard underneath, open the wee doors, mark where they are and paint away.

Watercolor with a white is good for cardboard and I used a sharpie EVEN though I know they fade with time. 

Cardboard Upcycling

One of the easiest ways to decorate and up-cycle for any event is to grab a bunch of old cardboard, a sharpie, some watercolors and go for it.

Or better yet, get your kids to do it! You could even collaborate. "Hey child of mine, you're not SUPPOSED to, but.........do you want to use giant permanent markers to draw something for occasion X today? 

"Oooh yes please" - they'll cry if they're anything like my child who will jump at the chance to do something she's not supposed to.

Then,  if they need to go play tetherball or jump on a trampoline or play a game baby doggie in which one or more of them gets captured and put into a hard labor camp and has to be actually tied up for the duration of the game, well that's fine - because then you get to do the water coloring! 

Water colour works great directly applied to cardboard or you could splurge and get some Crayon d'ache. They are these REALLY NICE french crayons, with prices that reflect the cost of each one getting it's own seat on the plane...flying first class, BUT ITS WORTH IT! They are water soluble things and are yummy squishy and loaded with pigment

You can use them as face paints too...at least I was told that when I worked at an art supply store years ago...and no one has had to be hospitalized  yet.

producta the un

I have some fairly large philosophical differences with one of my closest friends. Philosophical shopping differences are what I'm on about now.

 Indeed - these differences sometimes make me feel like someone poured battery acid in my sensitivity (wouldn't that be so much easier if there was just this place called 'the sensitivity' and you could tune it with a pitch fork and a little twist of a knob?)

My sensitivity gets SO messed up!! Even more so when this person stops responding because I'm jumping up and down like...I'm being burned with battery acid...and it's not something they want to deal with at that moment. 

"It f-ing hurts!!!" I angrily assert,  "thats it, I can't take it any more" I blurt out with the strength of a tornado and the conviction of someone who's said this before, and has clearly taken more. "Why do you take it so personally??" they ask.....DUH!!! Why???...I'm sure that's got to be the most annoying and STUPID question ever. Why. Why...what?

I'LL TELL YOU WHY I TAKE IT PERSONALLY!!! Because SHOPPING KILLS, and I DON'T WANT TO DIE! 

(think fast holly...jesus......why why why.....the word begins to form a fractal...SNAP out of it)

BECAUSE....shopping gives you cancer...it makes you fat...ummmmmm....it messes up your love life, it gives you warts and gas and eats up your retirement fund. Baby animals probably die because you shop...the rain forests are diminishing because you shop...ITS JUST WRONG!

Oh...why? Why is it so personal. My own stupidity only augments my rage.

Then the calm...

"Dude...check out my blog!"

"your consumerist tendencies are antithetical to my very existence!" This is a problem, one not helped by my very ungraceful  address. Note - anger is NOT the best persuasive technique.

But it's huge! Hand V machine. Creator V consumer. Big pocketbook v never had a pocket book to rub together...

So...what AM I on about?

I'm saying that it is WAY better to make stuff if  you can, than buy it. I think it's better for everyone, especially the children, who are so creative anyways, and will benefit SO MUCH more by your un-purchased items.

 I'm saying that buying stuff (especially if it's a routine of toy buying and not saved for special occasions) is probably more about YOU parent, than the child. It's probably about the time you don't have to spend with them, or your guilt, or your childhood - because if you stopped and looked around (the planet) I might think that your choice of activity with your child might be researching charities, or organizations for needy children, and giving some of your stuff away, or helping someone who needs in a way you can give. Getting your child excited about that instead of  the location of every nearest gift store seams SO much more...right.

Yes - I butt in, I say what's on my mind, I piss the people closest to me off ALL the time. SOMETIMES I can just act. In this case I did a bit of both.

 His daughter wanted to buy the pond that was on the box cover of her latest acquisition - some plastic african animals. I said we could make a better pond ourselves...and that indeed anything she had her eye on, we could make a better version of. So - we sat and we cut and she placed and designed while I stapled and glued, and her dad tossed a helicopter at me and said try making a better one of these then.

You can expect to be seeing a totally superior helicopter here made from recycled materials in the next week. In the mean time, our pond turned into a savanna and is WAY better than anything she could have bought. Some of the fish even have long eyelashes.

And really...It looks great with those little mas-manufactured animals in it. I love that stuff too - just in moderation.

I like juxtapositions...allot. Maybe that's why I like my evil consumerist helicopter chucking friend so much. I have to justify MY narcissistic, do goodie rants to him - and that makes me a better person, and more important...my argument stronger. Ah Ha! 

Green grass beyond the curtains

Sometimes life is more rich than others.

Once upon a time there was a girl and one day the girl managed to squeeze some spinal fluid out, and she lost the feeling in her foot and couldn't sit...for 3 months. She managed to loose her job and have to move out of her house...in the same glorious historic moment too. Aaaah life.

Aaah massive humiliation and  excruciating physical and psychological pain.

As we said, there was the girl...but attached to her, or she to them were....her daughter...her daughters father...her boyfriend...his daughter...the girls mother, father and brother, this other family with three boys...then another one with two girls...and that was just the way it was. 

One night the daughter was sad and wanted her own room.  "Daughter", 'the girl' said 'you're right, we don't have A house. We are EXTREMELY lucky, we not only have...count..." and the daughter counted..."4 houses?" she asked her little face starting to relax into a small smile. "YES!" I said "not only that but who's in your family now?"  1,2,3.......12..."12!" "YES! Where once it was 3, now you have 12!! You are one of the luckiest girls EVER!" 

And she was, and she felt the love and she fell asleep happy.

Sometimes family members sneak out at night though when other family return from the opera. Sometimes they just wont come in and sometimes those family members get eaten. Yes. Be thankful YOU have not been eaten by a coyote. It is the one real tragedy of this story that we lost

inky black the pirate cat 

in the middle of the night, one night, from that dark rodent infested field. I am sure he was just WAY too focused on a gopher hole and that it was a swift passing. He was always clumsy, he was the only cat I knew to regularly fall off fences, but we were his and he was ours and we miss him.

Beyond the curtains of my daughters sweet sleep, beyond the closed curtains on the life of our dear friend Inky black, there was need for other curtains, REAL curtains, not just dish towels or old skirts, but REAL working curtains.  

So I made some...out of paper bags.

I think that's all I want to say about that. They're easy to make, and at some point I'll put the HOW TO in the HOW TO place. In the meantime - I've got some green grass in my head for Inky black to play in for a while.

A charmed past

Well - a past thats led to a present full of single earrings anyhow. That's my reuse project of the day. The beginning of a charm necklace for my daughter filled with memories.

All you do is get some of those split rings at a craft store and have your brother make you a necklace, find some of your grandmas jewelry, and a watch that still has it's face, survive the bizarre partial flashbacks to a time when you were wearing allot of velvet and winkle-pickers from the Kings road and listening to allot of Bowie, Stranglers and T-Rex...

forget about the time some crazy chinese woman in LAX scolded you for wearing that dragon charm and practically put a curse on you in the passenger exit zone, forget the bad bad skin and unrequited love...oh the unrequited love....

forgive yourself for wearing your moms super cool three blind mice charm from her childhood in London to swim class in high school (if only you could just not see it sliding down the drain so vividly all these years later)

forget throwing up in every one of Kate's cars, forget the LAME pep rallies, the horrid math and the bottle of vodka under your graduation gown...and remember the good  times!!... with each of those old treasures you're collecting to wrap around your daughters neck...