I remembered to post my stool project here, perhaps I should just copy and paste my 27 page report here...maybe I will :D
One day I walked into my recycling room at my townhouse, and found a mirror, being thrown away. I hesitated but a day later, the day it was going to be thrown out for good, I took it, a free mirror is a free mirror.
We finished the base of the stool in carpentry, excitably I wanted to start but of course we have to wait. The day after I have my class on the cabriole legs I bring the mirror to school and began to carve a face into one of my legs. I continue to carve at the face trying to amplify features using depth. I also added more board to the back of the leg so as to create a 3-D look for the face, I also attached an arch between the two back legs. I cut out a trapezoid, then I cut the arch into that, I used contact cement to paste it in on an angle.
On the second day, Bob found a glass cutter and showed me how to cut my mirror.
After a few attempts of making a mess on my own, I, along with Jordan from second year, decide to make a legitmate cut. It goes horribly wrong. We try again, but a huge crack occurs in the mirror resulting in an unwated cut.
Eventually Bob comes over and cuts one nice piece for me. We have enough left for one 13”x 13” piece although my plans called for 15”x15”, so we leave it for now: perhaps I can rechange my designs.
I go back to my carving. By the end of this day my head was carved.
The following day I carved out the negative space, creating the rind effect I needed for my design. I drew out where I wanted to cut in permenant marker and I continued to carve out the face. Eventually it was to my liking.
During the march break I decided to begin my other leg, the budilings. This was to look like the picture, Balcony, where the middle of the picture was to appear like a sphere. To begin this I drew onto the leg where I wanted the buildings to be, then I would cut into the legs and carve out a hole to glue in the buildings later. After that I cut scrap pieces of stenoboard into the correct shapes and sizes for the buildings. I numbered each piece so I knew where they would go in the end. The curve of the cabrial leg is the sphere for the buildings that I built off of. The sphere was the last part I did and I had to do this several times, eventually the buildings looked ciriclar, The issue with this part is that it does look odd to the eye so you keep wanting to correct it which cuases you to loose what you just created. Another issue that I hadn’t thought of was that my buildings sometimes had to have curved backs to fit into the curve of the leg, this was easily fixed. Once everything was cut, I used contact cement to glue them down. I was going to carve balconies and doors out of here but I was certain that becuase of the size of the buildings the doors and windows would be lost in the scrimming process. The rocks at the bottom were just shavings left over from the carving.
The following day I began to scrim. Although I did one layor with flex glue and cheese cloth I didn’t want to use cheese cloth for the other layors because i thought it would create an unwanted texture, from what I saw of the piggy pooh it wasn’t taking that texture away. However looking back it would have been better. Either way, I used a canvas material for the buildigns, which worked out nicely, a bit tough to use but when cut correctly it looks nice. I didn’t want to use such a thick material for the face, however I wanted a smooth material, the checkered material was thinner and I thought I’d get my desired effect, however in retrospect I feel cheese cloth may have been better. I also did one layor of tissue paper and piggypooh over the arched two legs. The scrimming was done with flexglue, water and the aformentioned materials.
During the drying of these legs I began to carve the staircases, orginally I was going to make this out of a strong board and cut it out like a popup book, but then I realized that this wouldn’t be very strong for actors, so one day, ironically while doing the dishes (really), I thought I should make the stairs out of stenoboard. I began to use my carving tools to do this but the bansaw worked much easier. When it was finished I scrimmed them with flex glue and cheeseccloth several times. I painted them, with acrylic paints. Spounged them with ocher yellow, tints shade and base. I spattered in dark.
I needed to make several lizards, I thought I had wanted them to look the same, when I mentioned this to a second year they suggested a mould to be best, so I sculpted a lizard. Over the course of the week I made a mould. However, when it came making the cast I couldn’t figure out what material I wanted to make them out of, I thought perhaps glue but that wouldn’t work out. I put this part on hold, figuring I’ll decide later on if I’ll just sculpt them.
When I came back to school after the break I was told how awful my scrimming of the arched legs was, so I removed it. Either way I needed to incorperate a cumberbun into my design, I decided to do this over the arch. In order to do this I needed to attach some wood behind the steno board. As I began to take the measurements the arch broke in half. Easy, I’ll just glue it back together. However, while I was sanding down the backing it broke, ironically, right in half, unfortunately it didn’t break at the same spot. Oddly enough the stenoboard couldn’t be glued back together, the pieces didn’t fit back together, so I had to remove it and cut a new one. Eventually I was able to contact cement the wood to the back of the steno board. Then I scrimmed over the legs and over the wood, with cheesecloth and piggypooh; keeping the arch together very nicely and creating my desired smooth finish.
I then added the cumberbun, it was only to the arch as that was the part the lizards were real and thus the pattern didn’t need to be there. I’m not to pleased with how this part turned out, perhaps a thinner material would have been better.
My next project was the top of the stool, I had to add height to the stool to create my cube effect and to also put the stairs inside, this was done with me running around trying to find the right sizes of plywood. I had cut them earlier but my measurements had been wrong on one so I had to adjust things around. Once correct I simply screwed them into my already created base and then to each other. It added quite a bit of height. I found a hing in the shop and decided to use this for the lid. However the way I wanted to use the hing I couldn’t attach it to the outside, like I had in my disigns and still have it in an upright position, so i carved into the wood to put it down. Eventually I had to trim the top because I coudln’t go in anymore. I attached the hinge to the back of the box and the inside of the lid.
The remainder of the mirror did not work out, so I had to buy reflective paper from the bookstore. The following day I attached the reflective paper to the lid, this took two tries. Unfortunately I forgot to markoff where the holes were for the hinges. Eventually I guessed and found them. I attached the lid again to my box.
When I came back the next day the hinge came off. So I put it back, tried using the same screws but hat didn’t work, I had to use bigger ones, but these came out the other side of the box. Luckily stenoboard was going overtop of that. I still rasped it down but couldn’t do much else.
I cut the outer boarder for each of the side and I cut the frame for the mirror, out of stenobaord on the bansaw. I attached it with cement glue on the box and PV glue for the mirror. Once this was dry, I put paper over top the mirror and scrimmed it with cheese cloth and piggy pooh, I tried tissue paper and piggy pooh scrimming for the box but the tissue paper didn’t work. Someone suggested a layor of flex glue, after four layors of piggy pooh I added one and it worked well.
I made woodgrain samples in paint one day, Denise gave me the suggestions of steel wool with some instructions on how to use it. Once I felt I had a good sample and when the frame was ready, I painted the top of my box, the boarders and the perspective lines in my mixture of raw sienna and white. Once this was bone dry I would coat a small section in burnt siena (30% water, 70% paint) and then scrapping it off with steel wool. I then did the same thing with a burnt umber and water mixture, for texture I would use two coats of the raw umber. Eventually I cut my remainder of the reflection paper and pasted it onto the wood. I broke it down with a glue, water, and paint combination.
Once this was dry I began to glue on the struts that I had created pull up the mirror with the staircases on it. I had painted them ealrier to look like rock. I glued on a piece of wood which was screwed and glued to the piece of stenoboard. Once this was glued and screwed down I scrimmed over the wood to make it appear like rock.
While I waited for this to dry I worked on my upholstry, during everything else that was going on I was making a picture to silk screen onto my material. I traced it onto mylar. Then I made a trip to the textile classroom in Sheridan’s Arts and Craft’s building. Here my friend Kerri told me that I was supposed to draw my picture in marker, which I did right there. Then we brought it to a machine, in a dark room, the screen can never see sunlight, which burned my image into the screen. Then I washed out all the excess stuff on my screen, until I had my imag—this was the hardest part. We pinned my material down until it was nice and tight, Kerri mixed me some black dye, then I scraped it over my screen. We pulled it off, Kerri says that it didn’t work because my lines still weren’t dark enough, but I think it still looks great even though all my lines didn’t show: it looks like an authentic print which was what I wanted. We then baked it in a large oven. Then it was done.
That was the design ontop of the cushion. For the actual upholstry I couldn’t use the lid of my box as I absentmindedly already put a mirror on the other side so I couldn’t really staple material to it. Therefore I used some scrap thin wood to staple the material on. I followed all of the instruections demonstrated in class. I decided to use a smaller button because I didn’t even orignally want one in my design but alas, I had to include one. I chose a spot that was in the foreground so as not to ruin the perspective. The piping was sewn up and stapled to the cushion like it was shown in class, however I made the mistake of begining my piping in the corner as opposed to the middle of the side of the square, this was became an issue when I was finishing the piping as the corner became bulky.
I ended up making the lizards out of sculpy as this took me about three hours and the casting would have been much longer than that. I made a base from tin foil and put a thin layor of sculpy over top. This entire thing turned out awful. I brought them home to bake, and it wasn’t even in ther eten minutes (the box said fifteen) when it smoked up my house! I had to open up my windows, the balcony windows upstairs, turn on my fan, and unplug my stove. It took about half an hour, eventually I could walk around my room again without a towel over my nose. The lixards came out black. But then I didn’t have to paint them so it all worked out; I suppose.
For the Reptiles legs I took the orignal picture and photoshoped a entire paper of just the lizards. Then, I printed it on transfer paper and ironed it onto my material. I then staple gunned it down to the legs. Once this was done I hot glued the lizards down, making sure they appeared to be growing from the pictures and walking on their own across the arch.
The inside of the stool wasn’t comming up and the wood on the reflection kept comming off. What was I to do? I asked Bob and Michelle for suggestions, after bouncing some ideas around Michelle made the excellent suggestion of string on the edges to pull it up. After using some glue, screws and staples I attached the string and was able to pull up my base in no time. After this I mixed an epoxy, I forgot the hardner the night before, and glued down my staircases. I came back in an hour they were not dry, but I did notice that I had to take the one on the lid off because gravity will not let that stay. While I was waiting I glued down the upholstered seat. I let it dry overnight, then put it down so that the lid was parrell to the floor and opened the lid, glueing down the final stairs, letting it dry over the easter weekend.
