Duck Hunt

So a couple of months ago, while at a thrift store, I found this huge painting. I didn't love it, but its always cool to find a really big painting. So I asked Sar, what could I do with it? She replied that I should do my 8-bit thing to it. That wouldnt really work out with the framed art in question, but she got me thinking. So I spent the next couple of weeks looking for a painting or print that might lend itself to what I had in mind. Then I saw this:



Ducks? Well they dont really have anything to do with video games ... but ... wait a minute!



Obviously! I started work. And about 500 quarter inch bits later....



And the duck, closer:



So Now I am on the look out for framed art that can be made more awesome!

Also, enjoy this:



Thanks for reading!

...and then the etching cream took off my arm!

For the last couple of months I've been obsessed with glass etching. I decided upon this craft whilst trying to figure what exactly to make for my groomsmen. Although this was an easy craft (I mean, I did it, how hard could it really be,) the numerous steps involved made it very time consuming. The first step was to find an image:
Then, I converted the image to a simple black and white, preserving key aspects intact in order to keep the image recognizable:

Then, I transferred the image to contact paper, put it on the chosen glass surface, cut out the black spots with a box cutter, brushed on the etching cream, waited a couple of minutes, rinsed it off, and viola!:

Working on these glasses required all of my concentration, as well as the use of a head lamp.

In the end, I etched 23 different glasses. Here are some of the others.

Here are some old school Super Mario Brothers power ups.

Go Bills!

Final Fantasy Vii!

Cutting Instruments!

My next etching project has something to do with a previous blog post of ours ...

The relentless building block video puzzle!

Impress your boss with these stunningly professional tetris ties ...

Hand painted using acrylics with textile medium.

I’ve dabbled with painting ties in the past, but it is always hard to come up with images that fit well on such an elongated canvas – the tetris design is perfect for this shape! I am going to sell these on etsy once Matt and I get our storefront set up.

And just in case it wasn't already in your head...

Dum

Da-da-dum

Da-da-dum

Da-da-dum

Da-da-dum

Da-dum

Dum

Dum

Dum

Dum

Frightening.

My annual rant:

Now I know that Halloween is a time-honored opportunity for the ladies to dress more, um, provocatively than they normally would. There are classics like the sexy nurse and the french maid and what have you. But it seems like lately there is a slut-ified version of everything. I remember holding back gags as the girls on my college cheerleading team recited their plans, which included such ideas as (and I may be paraphrasing): "slut with butterfly wings," "whore with devil horns," "hooker with cat ears," and the list went on. I would then go home and joke to Matt that I was going to dress-up as something like a "sexy hobo" or a "trampy giraffe." I thought I was being ironic, but it turns out that you really can make anything slutty:

To my dismay, alarm, and amusement, these are all commercially available on the internets. A sexy Sherlock? Really? And the "mental patient" one is just downright offensive. Although this nonsense does make me feel like I am taking crazy pills!

Bits and Pieces

So I had this epiphany one day concerning old books - they are an awesome craft medium. I was so convinced that they were this undiscovered and cheap resource that I started blindly collecting and saving them. This process quickly escalated. For storage reasons, I ended up only saving the covers. With quite a stockpile of these book covers, I still hadn't come up with a function for them. I toyed with the idea of mosaic-ing them into a tabletop of sorts, but that project never became a reality. Then, with a little help from this book, it hit me ... I should turn to my first and strongest love for inspiration - Video Games!
8-bit art from salvaged book covers was born!

Obviously, as much as I love some of the current or recently current games out there (video game obsessed posts to come!), I knew that capturing next-gen graphics with cut up book covers wasn't going to happen. So I turned to the NES classics - Mario, Mega Man, Link. But first I had to transform the book covers of varying sizes into almost uniform and manageable bits. Now I know that I am a librarian, and maybe it seems wrong that I cut up books, but let me tell you ... it is so therapeutic. That probably means it is wrong, but eh. So I began cutting up the covers into half inch squares. The thing is, once I started cutting, I found it somewhat hard to stop. Before I knew it, I had a bit of a surplus. Sarah, on the other hand, has referred to it as a "poop-load of crap." Now I think that calling something a "poop-load of crap" is a bit redundant, but I am told that in this instance "poop" is being used to describe a quantity, while "crap" is referring to the item in question, so really she isn't even talking about feces. Yea right. All I know is that when we move out, and we have to have a couple of boxes dedicated to my cut up book covers, she is going to be angry. That'll teach her to throw poop around. Once I had the bits, I had to come up with the image. I started to look at old Nintendo characters, and began dividing the image up into a grid.

With the covers cut up into bits, and the image chosen and gridded, I was ready for the fun part. The plan was to paint a canvas, and then to glue the different book bits on in the shape of a NES character. Not hard at all. Here is one coming together:

I was really happy with this first one, and I ended up making a bunch more for close friends and family. (Below are some others that I have made.) Eventually I decided that it would be cool if I cut the half inch pieces into quarter inch pieces, thereby allowing me to use smaller canvases. You cannot really tell from these pics, but Duck Hunt and the one of Mega Man shooting are actually composed of quarter inch pieces. I found that cutting the half inch pieces into quarter inch pieces further appease my dominant anal-retentive side.

I have also decided to start trying to sell these things on etsy.com, which is a very cool site that only sells objects which are either vintage or handmade. These are the two that I'll be putting up for sale on that site.

So, when I am not giving books to children to read, I am destroying books to honor a childhood passion. Or playing Halo.