Tim Holtz August Tag

I really enjoyed raiding my stash to create my version of this months tag.

 As usual, I don't have the dies he used, but the idea behind these tags is to use the techniques.  I used the lattice framework die and a Kaiserkraft clock die which I chopped in half and split sideways across the tag, otherwise I followed all the instructions on Tim's blog.

What's on my Workdesk Wednesday 376?

Well, after a long break, I am back, all be it late to the desking party...last seen lurking at party No327...

I have been building airships and doing pipework and all sorts of fantastical things for the past 4 months.... That took up so much of my brain space and the hours in my day, that I could not commit to desking as I feel it is a reciprocal thing.  I did  16 daily posts about the installation at the restaurant which started here if you are interested...

So this is my desk in the midst of kitting up for the journal page class I am giving on Friday and Saturday this week.  

Steam Restaurant Part 17 "The final over View"

Steam is opening its doors this coming Friday...

Here is a sneak peek at the decor that will greet you...

 The Library room above and below.

 My diving bell above and the mini of mini airships below.

The lazer work that I added my stamp designs to.

 The radio Room with Mr Wildebeest.

 The Clock Room.

 The upstairs bar below.

 The entrance hall alcoves with my light fittings.

The bar off the Travel room/Map room. They will be serving TRUTH coffee...

 Bokkie in the Travel room.

Steam Restaurant Part 16 " Cog light fitting orbs"

It would seem that some things come to try us.  These light fittings were one of "those" things...

 The alcove is mosaic-ed with mirror, so the reflection is really great.

I took the plastic fitting out off the metal container which was used to make the "satellite dishes" on the the 7m wall.

I die cut a whole lot of cogs from sticky backed foil and stuck them onto the fitting.  They started peeling off after a while, so I covered the whole thing in a layer of clear glue for plastic, which acted like a varnish and held all the cogs on.

This looked great to begin with and then the lights were installed.

Horror of horrors.... the glue started to peel off and lift!  Q freak out!

So I brought them home again and scraped the whole lot off, sanded the plastic and started again!  Oh my Hat!  Theses silly light fittings cost me hours and hours and hours of work for not much remuneration cos I cant charge twice as it was my problem to fix!  They take about 6 hours to complete if you include the die cutting and sticking time, so multiply that by 2 and then again by 2 and add 4 hours to that for taking it all off... that is a lot of man hours...

In the end they look stunning again and I am happy to have my name attached to them.  Here is one of them on my desk as I finished it.

Steam Restaurant Part 15 " Suitcase shelves"

Originally the plan for the suitcase shelves was to put them in the bar which would go with the travel theme in that room.

Then we realised that this was not practical at all.  Firstly the old cases were not all flat on top and secondly they took up too much volume of space on the wall in their depth.

So that idea got canned and normal shelves got put up in the bar.

We did not want to loose the idea of the suitcases as shelves and so decided to add them to the wall in the library room where I was going to do floating books as shelves.  We swapped the one idea for the other and my dear hubby made me the shelves to go inside the cases and chopped the cases in half as well as put them up on the wall in a random design for me.  He really is a keeper!

This was the before photo with books falling off the wall...as it was when they purchased the restaurant!

 You can even see my tables in this shot! 

Steam Restaurant part 14 "crazy animal heads"

The owner wanted these taxidermy heads steampunked.

Someone else was going to do this project, but then he had to go overseas for his "pay the bills job", so asked me if I could take these two critters on.  Always up for a challenge, I said yes and he dropped them off at my house.

I must admit that this was not really up my ally...they are creepy in my opinion

I did not like these things looking at me.

The first thing I did was make them goggles!  Then I gave them each a coat of paint and some stencil work.

From there I just went mad adding cogs and pipes and any left over bits that I had not used on the walls!

 These photos were taken at my house  before I took them through to the restaurant.  Not the easiest blighters to photograph!

Here he is in situ.

 The fob watch actually works!

This is Mr Wildebeest's final abode, he gets to oversee the radio room!

Steam Restaurant part 13 "the tables"

This had to be part 13 cos there were 13 tables.  Originally there were only 12 and then unlucky no13 showed up.

In the last week of June, I was going to paint the designs on the tables at the restaurant and varnish them, but it soon became apparent that there was far too much dust around as the painters were sanding and painting all over the place.  Then there was the matter of the tables being in a bad condition from being stacked and stored.

I decided to take the table tops home to scrape and sand them down then paint them before I could put my designs on.

This took up a fair amount of time as it is winter here and although we don't get snow, it does go down to about 4 degrees at night and it rains a lot... so nothing dries fast at all.

The paint had to dry and I had to do two coats which is all a bit time consuming and frustrating when all you want to do is the fun bit of putting on the designs!

Table number 13 had a bit of bad luck when I had guests for lunch one Sunday and I had just finished putting the silver design on and my friends 3 year old ran his toy car through the wet paint.  I managed to wash it all off and had to do another coat of black paint and then re-stamped the design all in one afternoon...thankfully it was a sunny day!

I used black matt enamel to paint the tables and water based silver paint on the stamps which I had used on the walls so that there was a recurrent theme throughout the restaurant.  I then had to paint a polyurethane varnish on the top to protect the design.  This of course had to dry and harden for a week before I could stack them in my car and deliver them!

That night I picked up a photo on my Whatsapp from the owner to say my tables were damaged!  I nearly collapsed with stress as they had been so hard to do and I knew that I had delivered 13 perfect tables.  I even checked the date to see if it was Friday the 13th!  It was in fact Friday 29 July, they had taken 5 weeks to do!

It turned out that only 2 were badly damaged from the staff putting them on their "face" to screw the legs back on.  When trying to fix this damage, the polyurethane went crazy cos of the moisture in the air and so I landed up sanding all the tables to match.  The owners preferred the "distressed" look and at least now if they get scratched or damaged, it will just add to the look!

I will not be doing tables for anyone in the future.  Lesson learned!  Sometimes the simplest looking thing turns out to be the hardest!

Steam Restaurant Part 12 " the 7M bar lounge"

This area is upstairs and has a very low ceiling so I was aware that people might want to pull on things if they looked too inviting (especially as this was a bar area and things get more inviting as the evening wears on...)  So I had to put things as high up as possible.

This was the original layout in my car port which had to change as the owners decided to add lighting to the wall.  This is in the pipes where you can see the white wires hanging out in the photos below.  I also then added all the extra fire hydrant handles which were not used in the projects downstairs due to the crumbling walls.

My son helped me for 3 days solid during the holiday and earned himself a tidy little sum of money...

 I will have to go back to this room and take more photos when it is finished.  The electrician was there during this week to install all the fittings.

 The design was originally only going to be on one wall, but I continued it round to the stairs.

 I had the signs printed at my local printer and used gel medium to apply them to the wall.

 The fire hydrant handles were purchased from a fire hydrant manufacturer and they were intrigued by the idea that I needed just the handles and when they heard it was for a steampunk restaurant they wanted to know if steam would be going through the pipes!  They could not quite get their heads round the idea that it was all for show and nothing but air would be inside the pipes...  of course the red handles got a good dose of gold spray paint!

I tried to make the pipe work look interesting without being too cluttered and added some signage to this wall to make it different from the work in the other rooms.

I made the giant leaver from a kids sand toy as seen under the triangular sign in the photo above.

The "radar dishes" were originally light fitting stands and I added the center pieces from the car shop in China Town.

The light fittings were used in alcoves downstairs.  Nothing was wasted!