Where the Puzzle Project is now

The first pass of the FreakShow puzzles have been completed!

While I was sitting at the Ferndale DIY assembling a puzzle for fun, I mentioned to a fellow member that I had painted each piece by hand. He then told me that I was insane and let me know that if I covered a painting with contact paper it should laser with little burn. 

"Haven't you ever read the posters by the bathrooms?"

Apparently I had not. Because I checked those posters first thing on my next restroom visit. The answer was right there in front of my face, contact paper. And it really worked. I tested the idea out on this unicorn puzzle. 

Then switched to pre-painting some Christmas ornaments and necklaces… 

Contact paper (in realty, I used painters tape. It works the same way) is my new best friend on the lasers. This way I could use higher quality paint and paint brushes instead of the paint pens I had used before. 

Can't wait to see what other not-so-secret secrets I don't know :) 

I dream of… Adobe Illustrator

In order to run the laser printer at TechShop you have to use either Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw. Since I'm already familiar with Photoshop, I decided to stick with the Adobe suite. I searched YouTube for the most helpful tutorials finding The Complete Beginner's Guide to Adobe Illutrator by tasty tuts. Its a great comprehensive guide for those of us who don't have the most stellar computer skills. It even comes with downloadable worksheets to test skills as you learn. 

To check out the tutorial click...

!Here!

Initial Drawing 

Trace in Illustrator 

After watching all the videos and testing out some new skills I decided to try stencil & puzzle making again. I'm currently working on a project called American Freakshow, creating 10 characters to use for different art endeavors. The first one that was finished is The Mermaid, one sexy babe smoking bubble pipe underwater. 

Stencil on Patio Stone 

If you remember from my earlier posts, one of the reasons I had trouble with the puzzle idea before was because I uploaded a jpeg into illustrator and the laser cut around each individual piece. Brian then explained to me that I would have to make my own puzzle pieces using the pen tool. Round two of puzzle making went surprisingly well. I went with the freakshow idea and created a two headed anniversary present for my sweetie. 

 More Stencils! 

Outdoor DIY: Our Backyard Story in Pictures

Who doesn't want a gorgeous backyard that looks like your own personal Garden of Eden? Crazy people, that's who! But it also sounded pretty crazy to spend thousands of dollars on professional landscaping and decorations, so the minute I could smell spring I started digging in the shed and basement for things I could repurpose into outdoor decorations. 

Clearing the Way for Beauty 

Tilling is surprisingly therapeutic and incredibly good exercise. After tilling out all the flower beds I pulled two old bicycles out of the shed and used them for decor. Our poor, poor deck hadn't been washed or stained in at least ten years and was starting to look really rough. Instead of renting or buying a power washer from Home Depot which would have cost us hundreds of dollars, we rented one from a co-worker for a case of beer and stained it with whoops! stain. If you've never taken advantage of the whoops! counter at the hardware store you are missing out! It's the counter of misfit paint that has been mixed and left behind so they sell it on the cheap. We got the first can for only 9$. I've also purchased whoops! paint for larger projects and last week I found some concrete paint (normally pretty expensive) for 9$ as well to touch up the base blocks around the house. 

Build your Own Fire Pit

Beginnings

Last year for my partner's 15 year anniversary working with Beaumont Hospital she received a fire pit. A black, metal one with legs and a basket. It was functional but not very aesthetically pleasing. So this year we decided to repurpose the pit. 

You can find a huge amount of DIY fire pit tutorials online. I went onto Pinterest and found a diagram of how to prepare the soil for bricking. We didn't want anything industrial so I didn't have to get too involved with the strength of the structure. These are the steps I followed:

1) Dig out a circle to lay your bricks 

2) Fill with about an inch of pea gravel and fill in with paver sand 

   3) Lay your bricks

   4) Pack with paver sand 

   5) Layer top bricks 

I used regular bricks instead of fire bricks because we already had the pre- existing fire pit which cut the cost drastically. If you are building from scratch you should go to a specialty store and get fire bricks or a metal circle. It's been about a two months now of weathering and it still looks just as beautiful as the first day. 

Garden Walk

Most of the "grass" that surrounds our home is actually just weeds like "Creeping Charlie" that make the appearance of grass. So in spots where there's valuable equipment, or hard to reach with the mower, we've been replacing the grass with gravel. Thus came the idea for the garden walk. 

At craft stores like Micheals you can buy special patio paint to paint things like garden tiles and pots. The larger stones we harvested from a friends backyard to kill weeds and the pebbles can be bought for 2-3 dollars a bag at the hardware store. Easy to spread and provide good coverage.  

Other Decorations

 

I've seen different versions of this being sold at art fairs for upwards of 100$. This one was made with old plastic pots from our shed that I cleaned and spray painted and a metal dowel bought from home depot for under 5$. It doesn't look as beautiful as if we bought new clay pots but it meant not having to throw away ones we already had. 

Apparently bird cages are in right now. Found this beauty at a flea market in TN for 30$ and it was already painted this beautiful blue color. Punched some holes in the bottom and boom! planter. (That ice plant is actually flowering right now, beautiful red blooms)

Metal railing free garage sale find and some 2$ mini tea pots from the Christmas Tree Store has been a nice hanger for my cacti.

Outdoor lighting fix. Inside I replaced the bulb with a strong solar light. If you're going to try this out put a little more money into the light to make sure you'll be able to see with the shade. Spent 7$ at Lowes.

And horse shoe pits! Horse shoes is a super fun backyard game thats easy to set up. We dug out pits and laid down some sand but really all you have to do is tap the stakes into the ground and away you go. Made some backboards from scrap wood. Handmade stencil with card stock and an xacto knife. 

And we're ready to party! 

Portraits

New collaboration with the beautiful Rebecca Byington, Portraits: An Exercise in Reverse Illustration. Inspired by the Neo-Benshi movement in film, where artist reverse engineer the movies. Portraits aims to find new stories built into old. 

To see the album and poems visit my Facebook: Here!

And check out the accompanying song: Here!

I dream of… Sandblasting and Powder Coating

04/2014

I love warm summer nights spent in the yard with friends. And with the warm nights in Michigan being in short supply, that only gives us about a month to get the yard prepared for company. The inside of our house is full of character. I would like the backyard to exhibit the same character. And for our lawn furniture to not shed blue paint on to the butts of our lawn patrons. So here’s for Operation Trick out the Yo-Monster Yard: Ballin’ on a Budget.

The current disarray is slightly embarrassing. So I recently took the sandblasting and power coating class to try and fix up the patio furniture. Sandblasting is relatively straight forward. Make sure the gun is assembled the right way and that the fan is turned on. Powder coating is slightly more involved. You have to have you powder and a means of suspending your project from the grates of Tech Shops massive oven. So for the first trial I brought in something relatively small and test worthy, the umbrella stand. Last year I used outdoor spray paint on the furniture but within days the rust was coming right through because the material was not sandblasted or otherwise stripped of the original paint. However after about an hour and a half in the sandblaster I had not made very much progress. In fact, the sand was literally sticking to the surface of the umbrella stand regardless of at which angle I held the gun. After asking a few members no one could identify the material. This material has since been titled "grandma paint."Resilient and not to be messed with, grandma paint will not be moved.

After this, Shawn suggested using Aircraft Remover, an incredibly effective paint stripper used to remove Acrylics, lacquers, polyurethane and baked enamels within ten to fifteen minutes. You can pick it up at a range of stores from Auto Zone to Walmart. I have many reservations about this product and any other product that says poison in bold on the back and causes potential damage to your body from inhalation and touch such as chemical burns and death. Not to mention, as I prepped to use the aircraft remover a DC pointed out scars near his eyes he acquired using the product. After a week I still wouldn't touch the umbrella stand without gloves on. In short, use caution when handling aircraft remover or like materials. If you're a nervous nelly like myself, you might want to stick to your mineral spirits.

Even the aircraft remover is no match for 'grandma paint.' Respect your elders. Unfortunately, since I did not get to use the powder coating materials on this project I do not have a finished project to show. So instead, here are some nice process photos member Stephen Vincent recently posted on instagram.

Stephen is really good with documenting his process.

Been itching to get into the powder coating booth but can't come up with a proper excuse? Dig that rusted bicycle out of the garage and come play with us. 

I dream of…. Laser Cutting

[1/19 My First Brushes With Possibility]

At 10a.m on a Sunday morning after a Detroit Derby Girl's bout day I sat next to her. Covered in the previous night’s sweat, wearing the same clothes I wore to the Northern Lights Lounge after party the night before and looking like a rogue deer staring into the headlights of my own 2002, red escort.

Her name is Sarah Wagner and her art looks like the stuff of half remembered dreams. When she first mentioned the fabric-draped sculptures fashioned from laser cut armatures I was interested, then the clincher: they are see-through. Ladders that symbolize mountains, translucent silk boar heads with arterial insides- if you don’t believe how seriously rad her work is you can check out her website sarahwager.net. An experimental art program should insert her into their syllabi. 

Anyway, I think she thought I was tired, or still drunk from the night before. But I’m just a very visual learner. Talk of speeds, frequencies, vectors, and deffity mean nothing to me without the tools in front of me. I can’t tell you anything else about the first half of the class because I understood less than 0. Now the hands on portion, that’s when words regained their meaning. Subsequently, Sara Wagner had to re-explain everything to me.

Even though she described it as a machine that does not read subtly, it amazed me the sheer amount of things you can do with just one machine- etching, cutting, graphics, prototypes, fabric. The class ends with the completion of your first laser cut: a dog tag with your name on it. I made one for my girlfriend in her favorite Devil’s Night Dames orange.

Time to Fire Up.

Day II

“Everyone that lived through Vietnam, its their children that are in the war now and it’s changed their thoughts on whether or not we should be going to war at all.”

Bob Williams had the laser before me. He was cutting out a Michigan State logo to sit on the desk of one of his physicians. He cut it like a stencil, every piece separate and then layer stacked each of them to create the picture. He even cut out the wooden frame it would sit on. Bob Williams makes artwork for local VFW halls. He also has a website: Wntsimplyart.com that expresses his love for design as well as his passion for using recycled materials.

All the Tech Shop members and staff have been super friendly and willing to help someone out or just talk about life and making. After telling Bob it's my first time using the machine on my own, he watches me sit down and set up, giving me a brief summary of what Sarah discussed in detail during the laser cutting class. After he left me to my own devices it only took me about an hour just to get the thing up and running and figure out how to get something to print (ONLY an hour.) Sarah said it would take lots of testing with styles and materials to get something that we were happy with. I brought in some paper and bought a piece of wood at the door and started very simple, just cutting out and etching letters. I made some book covers for my two most recent zine publications Love Story, a trans genre study of transgender visibility, and The Last Place on Earth, a Thelma and Louise style poem following mine and my girlfriend’s trip up to the U.P. I also used the wood board to cut out some letters for my sister’s baby shower in a couple weeks. The theme is ‘TuTu Cute.’ This surprisingly only took me two tries (OK, about 5 if you count how many passes I had to do with the laser to figure out what settings would cut all the way through the board.) Overall: A successful first day. 

Day III: Riddle me This, Puzzle me That 

Sitting in the puffy circle chairs at Pier One that I always want but can never afford, I had an idea. I would make my niece a puzzle on the laser cutter for her fifth birthday. It would be shaped like a ‘My Little Pony’ and I could etch in her birth date and name. It would be the best puzzle any little girl ever received- I was aiming very high. Sarah Wagner, explained in the laser cutting class that it would take a lot of testing to get something that we wanted from the laser cutter. But for some reason, I thought that cutting letters and cutting a pony puzzle was like the same thing: how incredibly stupid of me.

The bulk of the problems I had during puzzle making round one can be explained by the fact that I have very little experience in coral and illustrator, the two programs one can use to run the laser cutter, and assumed that I would be able to use them in a similar manner to how I use programs like Photoshop and gimp. This is not true.

Learn from my mistakes.

1. Do not assume skills from one adobe suite product will translate into another.
2. Do not use stock images from the internet for your project, draw your own. This not only makes the project truly yours but it cuts out the annoying work of having to manipulate the image to get what you want. Draw what you want.
3. When making a jigsaw puzzle, remember it needs a clear border. 

4. When painting or drawing on any project, remember to test your materials. (Sharpie paint pens will work on basic wood where as 'craft pens' will bleed)

Thankfully I have a whole year before my niece's next birthday to perfect this process. 

Aftermath 

It’s freezing. Great chunks of snow are being released from the sky. Winter has become more of a nuisance than ever before. At this point, I’ve already been rear ended, there’s so much snow on our front lawn our neighbor has begun pointing the end of the snow blower into the air and praying that most of contents fall on top of our strategically placed mountains, and everyone is so seasonally depressed we’re practically OD’ing on vitamin D pills even though half of our doctors say vitamin D pills don’t actually make you happier. On this day, I woke up so frustrated by the winter situation I decided to dress in a form of protest…

And that is how I ended up walking with Brian Janowski through a snowstorm in down town Detroit wearing a pair of Capri pants and 5-inch tattoo wedge heels. Thankfully, by the time we left the bar that night, Jack Frost had ended his anti-spring temper tantrum and the streets were starting to be cleared. I explained to him my puzzle problems and we both agreed it’s past due for me to take one of the classes on illustrator. Although I understand the difference between pixels and vectors, one of them is an old friend and one of them is a man with a very strong foreign accent that I drunk dialed. If I can master vectors I can create and manipulate my own puzzle pieces without having to worry about finding a stock image offline that will ultimately cause me more problems than ease.

More About the Shop

TechShop is a playground for creativity. Part fabrication and prototyping studio, part hackerspace and part learning center, TechShop provides access to over $1 million worth of professional equipment and software. We offer comprehensive instruction and expert staff to ensure you have a safe, meaningful and rewarding experience. Most importantly, at TechShop you can explore the world of making in a collaborative and creative environment.

What We Offer

Each of our facilities includes laser cutters, plastics and electronics labs, a machine shop, a wood shop, a metal working shop, a textiles department, welding stations and a waterjet cutter. Members have open access to design software, featuring the entire Autodesk Design Suite. Huge project areas with large work tables are available for completing projects and collaborating with others. Free coffee and fresh popcorn are always available for your enjoyment. We also offer a number of experience-driven corporate events developed specifically to bring teams together and engage them in the act of making.

How It Works

It's simple. Anyone may attend classes. For a monthly or annual fee, members can reserve and use TechShop's tools upon successful completion of equipment-specific Safety and Basic Use (SBU) classes. Talented staff members are available full time to help develop ideas and improve technical skills.

You really have to see it to believe it. Stop by for a tour with one of our Dream Consultants and have all your questions answered. Whatever your background or skill sets, come in and prepare to be inspired!

Make Your Dreams Here

1/14

Theres nothing more frustrating than looking at the street you’re supposed to be on from a street you accidentally turned onto. I can get most places these days without google maps or GPS, it just might take me slightely longer to get there.  That said, as I looked down on 94 from a random overpass in Allen Park, I begrudgingly turn on the GPS on my phone that reassures me, SHE knows exactly where we're going. I think about where this new maker journey will take me. I have no idea. This is not Harry Potter. I don’t get to know the end before I even pen down the first chapter. 

At the end of my junior year of high school, when I began applying for colleges and looking for a major, I searched through every moment in my life. Searching for that pivotal moment that would tell me what I was supposed to be for the rest of my life.

I have always been blessed with wonderful music teachers…

…so I chose a musical moment. I’ve seen Wicked twice. At the beginning of the play, all the chorus members of Oz join on stage to sing ‘Good News’ that the wicked witch is dead. Together they created a wall of sound that is so pure and so full that goosebumps erupt onto my arms and I cried. Without hesitation or self-conscious I cried. I can think of many of these moments. Where the sound is so full it fills me all the way up to my eyes, even System of a Down's Chop Suey. So I thought I should be a musician and I found a school that could help me become.

I soon discovered, however, that I did not want to learn music.  I was not willing to dissect something so precious to me because when I found it in pieces it felt foreign. I wanted to sing, I wanted to make beautiful sounds without overthinking them. I was left at a loss. If my magical musical moments (a phrase coined by my middle school choir teacher) were not the moments that would lead me through the journey of my college education then what was I doing in a college with an excellent music program?
So I changed my major to theater just trying to sing and write but I was still dissatisfied. I hated acting. Hated making my body estranged from itself. Had to find something else. I had signed up to take CRTW200, Introduction to Creative Writing, thinking that it would help me in writing song lyrics. I was incredibly nervous. I never let people read anything I’d written before. It felt too personal. I could jump onto a stage and sing in front of hundreds of people but I didn’t like people listening to the songs I’d written. I put myself out for rejection. But it didn’t come.

Her name is Mary Choral (pronounced Ch-o-ral ironically) and she  blew my mind. One of the first things I remember is her creating our ‘jumping off points’ turning off the lights and makig us write like we were underwater. Weilding off centered phrases like “She is startlingly gorgeous. She is beautiful and her teeth grow everywhere” Which became the first line in my first book of self published short stories.  She was wacky, she was talented and best of all she believed in me in a way that made me believe in myself.

Writing on clothing, setting up outdoor installations, creating pieces inspired by dead French poets. I fell in love with the Eastern Michigan writing program. Right over the tops of my handlebars and into the real world like a rocket. I decided that I needed to be a writer. The program taught me not only valuable approaches to writing but to art itself. The physicality of it, touching it, tasting it, moving with it. It wasn’t all about the words, it was about material itself.  It wouldn’t be surprising then that when my friend from Detroit Derby Shawn, alias Uniballer, told me all about Tech Shop Detroit, the machines, the capabilities, and the friendly community of wacky maker’s that inhabit the building, that I was more than excited to be a part of it all in any way I could weasel my way in the door.

And I’m ready to get messy.