Thursday, April 7, 2011

Art City Austin 2011

Art City Austin is where Wendy and I tend to buy our matching art work every year, and this year was no different. What made it so great this year, was that this man, Rick Abrams was working in our medium - PLEXI! (He called it acrylic. We just aren't that fancy.) Here's Wendy's. Super cool. Here's mine. He does a collage in the back and then paints on the acrylic. There's spacers in between and it gives this crazy 3D effect. And then I saw my neighbor,and guess what she had. A brand new pink lady to go in her pink bathroom. Inspired.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Monday, April 4, 2011

If at first you don't succeed ....

Drop a lot of f-bombs and keep going.
We pretty much have the art of making address plaques down to a science. Occasionally, we have to do re-do one to get it perfect, but generally ... ya know ... we get it done.

Until 6121 vertical coke bottle color. Man, talk about drama!

When we went ordered the plexiglas, we were told they were temporarily out. Upon searching their warehouse, our supplier found a scrap piece of plexiglas in the same color, but a different version that was supposed to be more durable, and they'd give it to us for the same price. Perfect! And they went so far as to cut the scrap into three pieces for us. Fast forward to assembling the plaque.

Take 1: Drill out the piece of plexiglas... go to pull the protective paper covering off the plexiglas before attaching numbers - bam - train wreck. The paper will only come off in small shreds. I find out orange oil dissolves the adhesive glue holding the paper to the plexigas. After this (tedious) process ... as soon as the last piece is finally scraped off - I see a scratch. Sigh ... yes a scratch.

Take 2: Move onto the next piece from the original three pieces they gave me. Drill ... then go to remove the protective paper, again a total cluster f*&# to peel the paper. Eventually I get the paper off only to see yet another scratch. This is version 1,2 and the third piece we opted not to deal with.

Take 3: March into said plexiglas distributor and freak out about what has happened. They work magic and "find" a piece of the original plexiglas we wanted. Take home, drill, and finally ... a beautiful plaque is born!!!