I remember back in the Christmas-post writing season that taking pictures of anything that involves twinky lights is difficult. The flash overpowers them and, thus, they look pretty lame. But sans flash looks pretty cheesy too. And as I never took a class in photography, I hope you can forgive me for the extremely low quality of these pictures...
I stole this idea from the holiday issue of Blueprint, the dead Martha Stewart magazine that I was really smitten with. I'm actually still mourning its loss. Going to the magazine rack at Barnes and Noble has certainly lost a lot of its charm at this point. I'm always hoping that Blueprint will be revived. And I know I'm not the only one! Moving on... So I the moment I saw the Blueprint version of this project I knew I needed it to top my liquor cabinet, which, by the way, used to reside at the Dallas club Sense. It's great because that corner is sort of dark and dreary, and this is project that really lights up the space and creates a festive atmosphere all the time! Well, all the time that it's plugged in. I am still a little scared that the whole thing will catch fire and burn down my apartment building (and make me eligible for a Darwin Award). And when my coworker Mariya mentioned that Michaels was having a big sale (with 50% off one item coupons), I jumped at my chance to turn this long-term design dream into reality. My normally $40 canvas was a cool $20 thanks to the coupon, bringing the total cost of the project to about $21, since I bought a thing of paint, too. The twinky lights were donated by my mommy. So I painted the canvas a nice cream color, with some patches that tended toward yellow and others toward pink/red. So it's modern art gone bad. Then I poked 200 holes in the back using a fav tool from the hardware store to make these three starburst shapes and carefully shoved the lights into the holes. And then I plugged it in, and well, you get the idea.
I like it a lot. Come by, I'll make you a cocktail and we'll admire it together. (Oh and by the way, the picture below is a better view of the whole thing. I realize it looks terribly boring though. I'm going to have to work on that...)
The pictures of this craft don't look so hot. I'm the first to admit this fact. It was too awkward of an angle to get a good shot. Plus, I'm not so hot with the digi cam. My apologies. Here's the idea behind the craft though. So my office area was dressed as the characters of Peter Pan for Halloween. We needed a distinct Neverland theme. And tossing aside any obscure Michael Jackson references, we turned Wikipedia to remember the tale of Peter and his pals. And you know how you get to Neverland? Well, you fly through the window and take the second star to the right and fly on til morning. Please note that's from memory and I'm not sure if that's the exact celestial direction, but that's not important here. What is important is that I took a bed sheet, painted a window, used packing tape to make the frame of the window and scissors to cut the panes out. And we had ourselves a window. And when our visitors came by we covered the floor with white balloons to simulate the clouds with a pirate ship attached to the window. It was pretty cool. The entire department's efforts to transform into a fairy tale land won us $75 worth of breakfast tacos from Taco Cabana. So there's that. For the crafting details, I used craft paint with poster paint. What's great is that I diluted it pretty well with water and it took just a few ounces of paint to cover the entire twin size sheet.
Oh and as far as the pictures go, you get the overall view, which, granted, is cropped pretty funkily. And then you get some shots of me as Peter Pan and my coworkers as Tinkerbell and Captain Hook, respectively. I thought our costumes really sold us. What's great is that Mariya owned that dress already and it is perfectly Tinkerbell colored!
