Monday, November 30, 2009

VISIONS OF, LIKE, SUGARPLUMS

We feel the chill in the air and our minds turn to this year's Christmas card.  Just our minds, so far, not our hands.  In the meantime,we'll show a selection of  minoralterations cards from years past. First up, 2007:  we dipped clementines in red paint and stamped them on the card, then added tops (carved from an eraser) stamped in silver and drew hooks on in pencil.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

TYVEK FEELS SO GOOD

We found this chair on the side of the road.  It had no seat at all, and a scuzzy brown upholstered back with crusty foam, and we wanted very much to bring it back to life.  I had been collecting the Tyvek envelopes I received at work for a few months.  I did not have a specific project in mind, but the material is so strong that I was thinking that furniture covering was a possibility.  Besides, it just seemed ridiculous to throw all this stuff away.













 






The construction went like this: I tore off the seat back upholstery so I was left with just the plywood base;  I cut out a seat bottom from 5/8" plywood; I bought a 4"-thick foam block and cut it to fit the back and seat, duct-taped it down, and wrapped the foam in batting; I then split the envelopes along their seams, trimmed their ragged edges and laid them out to form double-layer sheets big enough to cover the cushions, then scotch-taped the pieces in place, and drew a grid in pencil over the big sheets; P. then took over and sewed over the pencil grid using a zig-zag stitch on the sewing machine (a bonus to all the sewing: it created thousands of perforations so we did not need to make separate air-holes to prevent the completed cushion from popping); we wrapped the sewed sheets around the cushions and attached them with a staple gun.

Finally, we screwed the back cushion to the frame, laid the seat in place, and voila!  A nice looking and thoroughly comfortable chair, all in one busy Sunday.