Whilst things have gone quiet on the travelling front and the County are back to being predictably unpredictable, I thought I would tell you about some arts and crafts pieces I’ve made recently.
I say recently, but may as well start from further back and include anything I like enough to be included. Many people are quite surprised at my ‘arty’ side, not to say that anything is very good… I have yet to receive a phone call to redecorate the Sistine Chapel.
I can’t quite put my finger on what or why I take such gratification from my creative pieces. I grew up with LEGO but apart from that it was mainly action figures. A probable reason would be growing up with the internet. When I started reselling my spare Corinthian football figures around 2002 I created my first ever website, alongside my own Newport County fan page. Since then I have built websites for Newport YMCA, The County Supporters Club and even today manage the Newport Citizens Advice site – oh and the blog!
Around 2006 the stated initial football figure website designed on Microsoft Front Page evolved in to an online shopping cart with thousands of products listed, taking orders of up to £700 from over 50 countries. Christ those were the days! Now one has a “proper job” it’s just the work website and my eBay account listing a paltry 3,000 items, so producing artwork (again – if you can call it that!) for around the home I guess fills the gap.
I’ve never owned a decent camera and someone who would find it too much hard work to ever consider being the 1.2 billion photographers on the planet. I’ve also never had the most up to phone on the market either. Imagine my joy then when I took a liking to this photo of Charing Cross tube station during a London trip with Mikayla to see Wicked in 2009. Don’t worry it gets better!
There may be another story to tell about when Kay first came to my house. Then 19, over 40 football shirts adorned the walls and ceilings apart from two sides full with shelves displaying my elite collection of Manchester United figures. If you have ever seen the film “40 Year Old Virgin” you’re almost there… but I was probably (a lot) worse. At least I had 21 years to spare and that collection is today down to 5% of what it was, stored in the mothers garage. Something that Kay never really gives enough appreciation to! How does that fit in to this? Well I for one thought it all looked rather splendid!
I digress… something that has ‘lasted the distance’ 9 years later is the display of football stubs. Once bluetacked on a whiteboard but now cased in a decent IKEA frame but one that needs replacing shortly. Six seasons watching United was a real life experience and there were a good few County and Wales games in the mix too. The frame was produced around 2013 and sits proudly above our staircase. When we moved in it originally was in the bathroom! But finally came to our senses when the steam affected the frame before it got to the stubs so moved to a more suitable area. Some great memories are in there, the centre piece being a ticket to the 2009 Champions League final in Rome.
When we visited New York in December 2015 I made a small collage of our time… a bag from Katz, a $1 bill and our tickets to the Liberty statue, and took this to a higher level for Kay’s gifts at Christmas 2016. For our first Christmas 7 years prior I bought her a personalised invitation to Hogwarts that had been in the same envelope all that time. As the seller accidentally sent us two I decided to experiment and was really happy with the result!
Going on from this we also had some bits from our London trip to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in October 2016, making use of a carrier bag, ticket stubs, tube ticket and obligatory LEGO minifigure, an idea I got from my friends the O’Donovan’s earlier that year.
Even the fridge got involved that day! And this was actually Mikayla’s idea! We have only just bought another set and will be updated very shortly with Amsterdam, Beijing, Prague and wherever we decide to go next year. San Francisco or Jordan look like front-runners so far.
Since this point Kay has been a MASSIVE party-pooper with our wall space, only potentially allowing something to go up if it replaces an existing bit of beauty. Luckily – and many of you will firmly confirm this – Chris knows best and Kay was won over for her birthday in October 2017. A quieter piece that covers up a small hole in the wall where the previous owners had something displayed. The story behind this is decent though.
The original Japanese text was actually painted aboard a cruise ship whilst I was on YMCA duties in 2015. I had managed to keep the paper in pristine condition until I got home via the Philippines, Singapore and Switzerland but left on a shelf ever since. Due to the awkward paper size I ultimately had to scan the symbols on and print a single sheet out. Kay really liked the finish product and the original sits at the back of the frame.
Mikayla started her first teaching role in September. She gets on really well with her colleagues and within the first week or two told me about this really cool board game another teacher had made.
Now, not to be outdone, and Christmas fast approaching with my bank balance still suffering from a failed Wales World Cup qualifying campaign, this would be an ideal gift that would need £20 to make but an investment of my time, roughly valued at £10,000… roughly. A massive task not only to think about how it would look, but then design, design to scale and finish took ages of brain work. The initial idea was to hand draw the game but I just wouldn’t have had the patience. Come here computer!
The spaces were all created on MS Word and the board created on Excel – who needs Photoshop? The three-dimensional aspect of the game is something I really thought made it one of the best things I’ve ever ‘designed’. The board was magnetic, so having bought some strips I was able to simply attach the game pieces – simply laminated card – whilst not blemishing the main board. Some budget sticky-backed-plastic to finish the job and behold Mikayla’s eyes light up on Christmas morning. All she needs to do now is produce questions around English language. Been waiting for 8 weeks…
And finally, last but not least is yesterday’s production. A collage from our holiday over New Year’s (I’ve written about 6,000 words in it elsewhere on the blog!!). Using the Disneyland map as a background, on display are a selection of ticket stubs, photographs, currency, receipts… and chopsticks half-inched from a restaurant we particularly liked. So much so we stole the cutlery. Sorry.
Promising myself and Kay I will stop there. I doubt it.
Be grateful I haven’t taken up graffiti or knitting!?
How Not 2 Life 